The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Crimes

BURKE, Richard His work was particularly dangerous since Corners- BURKE, Richard assassination victim (1870) ville, his hometown, lay less than 20 miles northeast A black Republican in Reconstruction-era Greene of Pulaski, birthplace of the terrorist Ku Klux Klan. A County, Alabama, Richard Burke was elected to the band of masked Klansmen raided Burk’s home on the state legislature in 1870, when his white successor night of July 4, 1868, and left him dying from multiple panicked in the face of threats from the Ku Klux gunshot wounds. Pulaski’s Democratic newspaper, the Klan and refused to fill his post. Political activity Citizen, responded to the murder by branding Burk “a was a virtual death sentence for Southern blacks vicious and dangerous negro [sic].” On the night Burk in those years, but Burke-an older man and for- died, an editorial maintained, he “was waited upon by mer slave-disdained all efforts at intimidation. By some gentlemen, who approached him to talk the mat- the time Burke returned from Montgomery to the ter over in a civil way. He wouldn’t listen to a word, Greene County seat at Livingston, in early August but immediately began firing at the party. The gentle- 1870, Klan members had decided he must die. men, who were said to be Kuklux, were compelled to The trigger incident occurred on August 13, shoot him down in self-defense.” If true, it seems odd when rumors spread that 100 armed freedmen were that the gunmen took pains to conceal their identities descending on Livingston, prepared to massacre after the shooting. In any case, they were never pub- white residents. The county sheriff led 200 armed licly named and the murder remains unsolved. men to intercept the guerrillas, but he found only BURKE, Richard His work was particularly dangerous since Corners- BURKE, Richard assassination victim (1870) ville, his hometown, lay less than 20 miles northeast A black Republican in Reconstruction-era Greene of Pulaski, birthplace of the terrorist Ku Klux Klan. A County, Alabama, Richard Burke was elected to the band of masked Klansmen raided Burk’s home on the state legislature in 1870, when his white successor night of July 4, 1868, and left him dying from multiple panicked in the face of threats from the Ku Klux gunshot wounds. Pulaski’s Democratic newspaper, the Klan and refused to fill his post. Political activity Citizen, responded to the murder by branding Burk “a was a virtual death sentence for Southern blacks vicious and dangerous negro [sic].” On the night Burk in those years, but Burke-an older man and for- died, an editorial maintained, he “was waited upon by mer slave-disdained all efforts at intimidation. By some gentlemen, who approached him to talk the mat- the time Burke returned from Montgomery to the ter over in a civil way. He wouldn’t listen to a word, Greene County seat at Livingston, in early August but immediately began firing at the party. The gentle- 1870, Klan members had decided he must die. men, who were said to be Kuklux, were compelled to The trigger incident occurred on August 13, shoot him down in self-defense.” If true, it seems odd when rumors spread that 100 armed freedmen were that the gunmen took pains to conceal their identities descending on Livingston, prepared to massacre after the shooting. In any case, they were never pub- white residents. The county sheriff led 200 armed licly named and the murder remains unsolved. men to intercept the guerrillas, but he found only