From the Feb. 26, 1946, Nashville Tennessean:
COLUMBIA, Tenn.—Tennessee state guardsmen and police formed a tight net around the city’s Negro section early this morning after four city police and two civilians were shot during spasmodic outbreaks of violence in the area.
The shootings, which left one patrolman seriously injured, snapped a growing tension that had gripped the city since early yesterday morning when two Negroes were arrested in connection with an attack on William Fleming, 28-year-old radio repairman.
More than 100 state highway patrolmen, armed with tear gas and riot guns, and between 400 and 500 guard troops were thrown into the area on order of Gov. Jim McCord who promised “sufficient troops to take care of the situation.” …
Violence flared anew early this morning when two civilians, Borgie Claude, 34, and James Beard, 31, went into the sector and were fired on by an unseen gunman, armed with a shotgun.
Claude and Beard suffered minor leg injuries from buckshot, but were confined to King’s Daughters Hospital for treatment. Meanwhile, Sheriff J.J. Underwood said that 11 Negroes have been rounded up, five within the 40-minute period preceding 2 a.m. Weapons were taken from several, he said. Their names were not immediately available.
The trouble began at 10 o’clock yesterday morning when Fleming became engaged in an argument with Gladys Stephenson, Negro woman, and her son, James Stephenson, in the Caster-Knott electrical appliance store on the Public Square.
During the affray that followed, Fleming was pushed through a huge plate glass window and then stabbed several times with slivers of broken glass, Chief Griffin declared. Both Negroes were arrested but were released a short time later under bond.
It was following the pair’s release that crowds began to mill about the courthouse and the Negro element gathered in Mink Slide, a Negro sector lying between East Eighth and Ninth streets and Main and Woodland.
While feeling continued to mount, gunshots were reported in the Negro section, and it was then that Chief Griffin led his three officers into the area to investigate. As they stepped from their automobile, a barrage of buckshot cut the unsuspecting officers down, he said. None of the investigators had an opportunity to return fire.
James Morton, Negro undertaker, whose establishment is in the besieged area, said that he understood that one Negro had been shot during an exchange of fire but did not believe he was dead.
Morton said that one of his drivers, returning to the mortuary after delivering a family to another Negro section, was fired on but escaped injury.
Meanwhile, John Fleming, a brother of William Fleming, appealed to irrate citizens gathered on the Public Square to “let well enough alone and don’t stir up any more trouble.”
The radio repairman was a brother of Flo Fleming, state highway patrolman and the Democratic nominee for the office of sheriff in Maury County. He was one of seven brothers who served in the armed forces during World War II. One of the brothers was killed in action. …
Armed Negroes were reported to have set up barricades in the area. Authorities said they would begin moving in at daylight. It was thought that the situation had been brought under control until Claude and Beard went into the sector and were shot down. …
Mayor Eldridge Denham said: “Race relations here in Columbia have been good and I had no idea of any build-up to today’s violence.”
Morton, the Negro undertaker, as spokesman for his race, declared: “It is a deplorable situation and while I have no idea when it will end, I hope a peaceful solution will be found immediately.”
A reporter for The Nashville Tennessean attempted to reach by telephone an establishment reported to be headquarters in Mink Slide but received no answer. The entire area was blacked out, in deep contrast to the illumination in other sections of the city. Two hundred or more Negroes are believed to be surrounded. …
(Tennessee State Library and Archives)
Editor’s note: The Tennessee Highway Patrol raided Mink Slide the next morning, arresting residents, confiscating weapons and destroying property. By the end of the incident, four white men and over 100 black men were jailed, two of whom from the latter group were killed while in custody during a shootout with police.
The main trial featured 25 black defendants (pictured above) charged with attempted murder, but ultimately only one was successfully convicted, in a second trial. There were no other prosecutions relating to the event, including the four white men or the Stephensons (James Stephenson was also a WWII veteran).
In the main trial, lawyers provided by the NAACP, including Z. Alexander Looby and future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, argued that a fear of mob violence led residents of Mink Slide to take up arms and defensive measures. The prosecution, and even local newspapers such as the Nashville Banner, tended to focus blame on outside agitators and Communist influences (the latter of which exploited the event for propaganda purposes).
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Columbia incident, considered an early landmark in the civil rights movement. For more, see “Race Riot In Columbia, Tennessee, February 25–27, 1946” by Dorothy Beeler in the Spring 1980 Tennessee Historical Quarterly, and No More Social Lynchings by Robert W. Ikard (1997, Providence House Publishers).
For the full 1946 article and more photos, get the February 2016 issue of The Nashville Retrospect.
UPDATE: Click here to read an account of the jail shooting as witnessed by Nashville Banner photographer John Morgan.
In the photo above, defendants in the 1946 Columbia “race riot” trial were charged with attempted murder, but ultimately only one was successfully convicted, in a second trial. For more about the incident, get the February 2016 issue of The Nashville Retrospect. (Nashville Public Library, Special Collections)
Editor’s note: In response to our coverage of the 1946 Columbia “race riot” in Dispatch No. 5, John Morgan II, son of John Morgan, the Nashville Banner photographer who witnessed the shooting at the Columbia jail, wrote us to explain what his father saw. For more 1946 coverage, see the February 2016 archive issue of The Nashville Retrospect.
By John Morgan II
Feb. 28, 2021
The story about the Colombia race riots did bring back memories of what my father told me about them many years ago. He was bothered by the shooting of the two black men in custody.
In February 1946, Daddy was just back from the Pacific. He served in the Marines and was involved in combat on Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Pelilu, Saipan and mainland China. The action in China involved his unit moving up the coast to set free a Japanese prison camp for American troops. He spoke often about how awful things at the camp were. How many of the prisoners were at the point of death. And he spoke of the joy of setting free fellow Americans who had suffered so much. He would always add that one of those set free was Pappy Boyington and Marine pilots from the Black Sheep Squadron.
Daddy was also present at the surrender ceremonies in Tokyo. I say all this because I am proud of him. And because the prison camp freedom would have happened within a few months of the Colombia riots.
Daddy was a combat photographer. A camera in one hand and a rifle in the other. He was often sent out to take photos for reconnaissance of Japanese troops. He sometimes had another marine assigned to him whose job was to try to shoot the Japanese while they shot at Daddy. He saw many horrors that most of us cannot grasp and never will. And he made it clear that he did not want his children to ever experience any of that.
And yet, he talked to me a few times later in life about the Colombia riots. He was sent by the Nashville Banner to get pictures of the fighting. The Nashville Retrospect was right to point out that some of his pictures, particularly of the blacks who were wounded, were not printed.
The specific incident that bothered him the rest of his life was the shooting of two black prisoners. Daddy happened to be in the area in the room where the two men were being held. Daddy said that as he sat there, a deputy came into the room with a paper bag in his hands. He walked over to the two prisoners and said, “Here’s those cigars you wanted.” Then the deputy handed the bag to the two prisoners. In the bag were ammunition and weapons, not cigars. As soon as the two men looked in the bag, deputies shot them. The authorities would be found innocent because the men were armed.
Daddy told me the story. He saw the men shot. Daddy said to me, “They just killed those men. They weren’t trying to do anything. They just killed them.” I don’t know whether my father wishes he had said something. Or done something. I just know that big brave Marine looked at me with a haunted look in his eyes.
These are my personal memories of what my father told me. Memories can lie to us. I have not been able to find another family member with whom my father shared this story. These are my memories from many years ago. The incident happened a couple of years before I was born. I was in the leading edge of the second greatest generation, the Baby Boomers. We freely admit who the Greatest Generation was.
A highway patrolman searches a man during the Columbia incident. (Nashville Public Library, AP)
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