House Resolution 49

A RESOLUTION RECOGNIZING AND HONORING THE LIVES OF ALL WHO WERE LOST IN THE CLINTON MASSACRE ON SEPTEMBER 4, 1875, AND THE DAYS AND WEEKS THAT FOLLOWED, UPON THE OCCASION OF THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE TRAGEDY.

WHEREAS, the 150th anniversary of the Clinton Massacre occurs on September 4, 2025, 150 years since the beginning of a dreadful period of time when African Americans from Clinton, Mississippi, and the surrounding towns were murdered for exercising their rights to vote and engaging in the political process, leading to the numerous lives being lost in the aftermath of that day and the effective end of Reconstruction in Mississippi; and

WHEREAS, African-American males in Mississippi, most of whom had joined President Abraham Lincoln's Republican Party, first began voting in 1867 by electing candidates to the Constitutional Convention of 1868; and

WHEREAS, by 1875, African-American males had experienced eight years of suffrage, and September 4 of that year held the promise of continuing the incorporation of freedmen within the state's political process, so Republicans planned political rallies that day at Utica and Clinton in Hinds County and at Vernon in nearby Madison County; and

WHEREAS, whole families of African-American Republicans gathered at Moss Hill, the site of a former plantation in Clinton destroyed by Union troops during the Vicksburg Campaign of 1863, and the estimates of the attendance that day ranged from 1,500 to 2,500, nearly all consisting of freedmen and their families who gathered to enjoy an afternoon of picnicking and politics, and there were also about 75 Caucasian people present, 18 of whom were known to be Democrats from nearby Raymond; and

WHEREAS, Governor Aldelbert Ames was initially scheduled to speak to the crowd, but he asked Captain H.T. Fisher, a former Union officer and editor of a local Republican newspaper, to speak in his stead, and aware of racial tensions, Hinds County Republican leaders issued an invitation to the local Democratic Party to send a speaker of their own in the spirit of open debate, so the Democratic candidate for state senate, Amos R. Johnston, addressed the crowd for the first hour of the rally without incident; and

WHEREAS, however, when Captain H.T. Fisher took the platform next, he was heckled by the group from Raymond, and several witnesses, including an African-American Republican named Daniel C. Crawford, reported hearing one of the Raymond men shout, "Well, we would have peace if you would stop telling your damned lies."; and

WHEREAS, Republican organizers, including African-American State Senator Charles Caldwell from Clinton, made several appeals for peace; yet, the events of that afternoon quickly escalated into violence; and

WHEREAS, Eugene Welborne, another rally organizer, testified that many of the Caucasian Democrats in attendance fell into formation, brandished weapons, and trained them upon the crowd, "The thing opened just like lightning," he recalled, "and the shot rained in there just like rain from Heaven."; and

WHEREAS, frantic African-American mothers scooped up their terrified children and fled to the woods in every direction to avoid the gunfire, with one African-American mother even hiding her infant child in the hollow of a nearby tree for protection, and fatalities that day numbered three Caucasian men and at least five African Americans, two of whom were children; and

WHEREAS, sadly, the violence on September 4 merely served as a prelude to the racial atrocities committed during the days and weeks that followed, and amidst rumors of an African American plot to storm the town, Clinton's mayor called for assistance from nearby White Liners (essentially a paramilitary unit of the Mississippi Democratic Party) in neighboring towns, including Vicksburg and Raymond; and

WHEREAS, these White Liners traveled by railroad to Clinton, and their numbers quickly swelled to several hundred before nightfall, and "They [the White Liners]," Welborne grimly recalled, "just hunted the whole county clean out, just every [black] man they could see they were shooting at him just the same as birds"; and

WHEREAS, Sarah Dickey, a Caucasian educator from Ohio who had moved to Mississippi to educate African-American women and children, described the scene in a letter to President Ulysses S. Grant, "I was at the republican mass meeting, held at this place [Clinton] … the democrats, who were on the ground, went there for the express purpose of creating a disturbance and of killing as many as they could … You hear a great deal about the massacre at Clinton, but you do not hear the worst. It cannot be told."; and

WHEREAS, while the violence following September 4 resulted in no additional deaths of Caucasian Democrats, the African-American death toll could only be estimated at between 30 and 50 as the events of the days following September 4 turned a presumed race riot into a massacre; and

WHEREAS, in order to influence the upcoming statewide elections to be held on November 2, 1875, and to place their stamp on the historical narrative, Democratic Party leaders dramatized the events in Clinton as a "Premeditated Massacre of the Whites" by hundreds of heavily armed and organized African Americans; however, these Democratic accounts were subsequently refuted by a 1876 report prepared by a special United States Senate investigative committee chaired by Senator George S. Boutwell of Massachusetts (the "Boutwell Report"); and

WHEREAS, after acquiring hundreds of sworn testimonies, the Boutwell Report concluded that "the riots … at Clinton on the 4th of September, were the results of a special purpose on the part of the democrats to break up the meetings of republicans … and to inaugurate an era of terror, not only in those communities, but throughout the state," and the most damning evidence cited in the Boutwell Report was an article published by Raymond editor George W. Harper in The Hinds County Gazette just a few weeks prior to the rally at Clinton, which urged: "There are those who think that the leaders of the radical party [the Republican Party] have carried this system of fraud and falsehood just far enough in Hinds County, and that the time has come when it should be stopped – peacefully if possible, forcibly if necessary … whenever the radical speakers proceed to mislead the negroes, and open with falsehoods, and deceptions, and misrepresentations, that the committee stop them right then and there and compel them to tell the truth."; and

WHEREAS, on the morning of the rally, Republican leaders suspected that the group from Raymond came to Clinton in order to serve as such a "committee," and later, the Boutwell Report declared the connection to be true; and

WHEREAS, Clinton served as the inauguration of the infamous Mississippi Plan, a plan devised by the Mississippi Democratic Party to regain political control of the state by any means necessary, and despite countless requests for federal assistance by Governor Ames and citizens like Sarah Dickey, President Grant declared that "the whole public are tired out with these annual, autumnal outbreaks in the South," and he adopted a policy of nonintervention with respect to Clinton and the rest of the former Confederacy; and

WHEREAS, while local historiography has placed the responsibility for the countless murders which took place after September 4 on White Liners from outside of Clinton, testimony from the Boutwell Report reveals that Clintonians accompanied White Liners and helped to identify targeted victims, and in several instances, those victims recognized their neighbors and friends among the assailants; and

WHEREAS, William P. Haffa, a Caucasian school teacher who had moved to Mississippi from Pennsylvania, served as a Republican justice of the peace and was up for re-election in 1875, and his wife, Alzina, recalled the morning of September 6 when 50 to 75 men broke into her home and murdered her husband, and she identified two of her family's attackers, Sid Whitehead and another man named Mosely, who choked her after she called him by name, and Whitehead refused to render medical assistance for her husband after he had been shot; and

WHEREAS, the rest of her testimony follows: "I had a nursing-baby then, and it was lying on the bed, screaming … they broke a shutter off the window and fired at Mr. Haffa … They fired twice, and I went to him … and says he to me, 'Mamma, I want water.' As soon as I could get a light I gave him water and laid him down, and ran out for assistance, and sent my little boy over to some colored people, and they came rushing over … He said, 'Mamma, I am going to die,' and he asked God to have mercy on his soul, and he laid his head on my shoulder and expired."; and

WHEREAS, on September 5, White Liners dragged Square Hodge, an African-American man, from his home as his distraught wife and children watched, and as these men invaded their home, Hodge family members scrambled into hiding; and

WHEREAS, Hodge's wife, Ann, testified that "they made him [Hodge] come out from under the bed, and started to shoot under the house – mother put the children under the house.", and she then recalled that these men demanded to know if her husband had attended the Clinton rally the previous day; and

WHEREAS, Ann identified one of her neighbors, Mr. Quick, among the mob, and although Quick did not appear to display any sympathy at the time of her husband's kidnapping, he returned to the Hodge home a week later to help Ann find and recover her husband's body, but sadly, the only way that she could identify his corpse was from the way she had tied his shoes the night he had been kidnapped; and

WHEREAS, as chairman of the Hinds County Republican Party, William Clark also attended the political rally in Clinton, and after the war, Clark, an African American, helped to organize and pastor Pleasant Green Baptist Church in Clinton, but he was also interested in politics; and

WHEREAS, a few days after September 4, Jesse Furver, a lifelong friend of Clark and a Caucasian minister, approached him, and Furver informed Clark that he intended to kill him because of his participation in the Republican Party and the rally; and

WHEREAS, Clark remained calm and tried to talk Furver out of the deed by recounting Bible stories of friendship, and finally, Furver agreed to let Clark live by firing the gun above Clark's head which allowed Clark to drop to the ground, thereby making it look as though Furver had carried out the heinous deed, and in order to protect Furver, Clark promised that he would never be seen in Hinds County again, and it was a promise that he kept; and

WHEREAS, legislator James G. Patterson of Yazoo County was lynched on October 20, 1875, and his last request was for the lynchers to take the money out of his pockets and send it to his sisters in Ohio for their schooling, and Charles Caldwell of Hinds County was murdered by a mob in Clinton on December 25, 1875; and

WHEREAS, understanding the complicated period of Reconstruction is difficult, especially in the South where the mere mention of the word "Reconstruction" conjures extreme emotions and opinions, and historian Eric Foner acknowledges the same, "Sadly," he laments, "it will take a long time for scholarly writing to overcome the distorted image of Reconstruction that so powerfully penetrated the national consciousness."; and

WHEREAS, Foner, however, remains optimistic and points to a small, but growing trend on the part of historians to attempt to unite the historical memory of Reconstruction with efforts of racial reconciliation, and on September 4, 2015, (the 140th anniversary of the Clinton Riot), the city of Clinton became part of this small, but growing, trend referenced when the city hosted a symposium to educate the community about the history of the Clinton Riot and unveiled two new historical markers related to this event; and

WHEREAS, among those who comprised the symposium panel was Robert Clark, the first African American elected to the Mississippi House of Representatives since Reconstruction, but he was not, however, the first member of his family to be involved in politics, as that honor is held by his aforementioned grandfather, William Clark; and

WHEREAS, it is the policy of the House of Representatives to recognize and honor great Mississippians, especially those such as William P. Haffa and Square Hodge and countless others who lost their lives on September 4, 1875, in the Clinton Massacre and in the aftermath that followed:

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE STATE OF MISSISSIPPI, That we do hereby recognize and honor the lives of all who were lost in the Clinton Massacre on September 4, 1875, and the days and weeks that followed, upon the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the tragedy.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That copies of this resolution be furnished to the members of the Capitol Press Corps.