An Outrage

A traveling black man is harassed and shot by a group of “white youngsters.”

On the night of the 20th ultimo, one of the most inhuman crimes that has graced the annals of the history of Bayminette was perpetrated by a gang of white youngsters upon a poor, unoffending colored man for no other cause only that he was a Negro. Between the hours of 7 and 8 o’clock, on the night mentioned above, a report of a pistol was heard; a few minutes later another report was heard, then the cry of murder! Murder! Murder! Rent in the air.
Mr. J. B. Blackburn and Mr. H. G. Stranmyer rushed out of their stores followed by others, and were soon upon the scene. The victim was a colored man. An investigation soon told the story. He was shot, the ball having entered just below the left shoulder blade. HE was ten up and carried to Mrs. Nancy Hamilton’s. The next day the editor of The Banner called in to see him, and obtained the following statement. He said:
My name is Pearleman Creafe; my home is at Castleberry, Ala., I am 21 years of age; I am unmarried: I stay home with my father and mother: we are farmers. I left there yesterday evening on a freight train, beating my way to Mobile, but when the train arrived here at Bayminette the brakeman would not let me get on any more, so I decided to stay here all night and go back up home the next day.
After the train left I was walking down the railroad track. I walked up to a crowd of white boys, six or seven, all standing upon the railroad. They told me to halt, I did so. Then they told me to dance; I told them I was a member of the church and did not desire to dance. Then one of them drew his pistol on me and said I had just as well dance because they were going to kill me any way. Then I tried to dance but I could not. The one who held the pistol on me said to one of the others get a stick. He did so; then he struck me with it; he almost knocked me senseless.
I turned and tried to run the best I could, all of them right after me hollowing to me to stop. The one who held the pistol on me shot at me once but he missed me. He ran up to me and knocked me down with something that felt like it was iron. I got up and ran again, he knocked me down four or five times; I came to a fence. After I got over the fence I stumbled and fell. While I was down he ran and got me and then shot me, then got up and ran off.

“An Outrage,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed August 13, 2026, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/211.