A Southern Judge Commits Them Without Bail

For the first time in Mississippi history, white men are facing the court for “the lynching” of “Negroes”; the crime was committed because the black men disrespectfully addressed two white men by their first names.

A Southern Judge Commits Them Without Bail.
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The New Orleans, La., Times-Democrat in its issue of Jan. 28, 1903, announced that white men faced a court of law at Kosciusko, Miss., for the lynching of Negroes for the first time in the history of Mississippi.
It was a habeas corpus hearing before Judge W. F. Stephen in order to secure bail. The correspondent says: “The twelve men indicted for the lynching of the Negroes, Hallum and Moore and now in custody, show that they realize the gravity of the case. At first they were inclined to smile at the indictment as a mere form. Then the arrests and imprisonment followed, and the discomforts of the situation dawned upon them. They appeared in court and witnessed the vigorous fight made by the State’s representatives to remand them to prison without bail to await their trial. They found themselves face to face with the common fact that they were being prosecuted by able attorneys and learned the seriousness of the charge. This impression mirrored itself on their faces.”
The white men charged with the crime are J. R. Tucker, J. E. Green, J. J. Green, G. M. Charleste, J. F. Whaitey, Lee Whaitey, Noah Lindsey, Aleck Kirk, Bill Goff, Oliver Wasson, and Shelly Burton.
The following is the correspondence:
Koscinsko, Miss., Jan. 27. – The simple story of the crime for which the twenty-eight men were indicted by the grand jury of Attala county sufficiently explains the acting of the body.
Just about dusk of an evening in last July several negro women made their way to a clump of trees edging an old field. Before approaching too closely they reconnoitered. There was nothing in sight to frighten them. The field was bare of everything save dead stubble, and from the shadow of the trees came no sound. They plucked up their courage and began to scan the ground narrowly, as if in search of something lost. They found it.
Without warning they came upon a horrible spectacle. At the foot of a small live oak tree lay two inanimate bodies. Both were bound as to wrists and ankles with trace-chains secured with padlocks. The chains were looped around the tree, evidently in the fear that the prisoners might escape. There was no danger of escape now. Clothing and bodies punctured with bullet holes and soaked with blood told the tale of how they came to their end.
The women released the bodies from the chains that bound them even in death. They moaned after the manner in their race, giving vent to their grief in the monotonous chanting of sorrow that has an indescribable accent of weirdness. The bodies dislinked from the tree, they composed themselves as best they might. A wagon was summoned that had waited on the edge of the field. The two men were placed in it and taken to what they once called home. On the morrow they had their burials.
It was the general opinion in the “Cross Roads” neighborhood of Attala county that this was the final scene of the tragedy. No one dreamed that anything could come of it. Those who had participated in the killing of the two Negro men slept peacefully and with clean consciences. They believed that they had put down a threatened uprising of the blacks in that district, and had set an example that would substantially curb the insolence of certain elements of the Negro population for some time to come. Had anyone suggested that there might be an epilogue to the tragedy he would have been regarded as an idle babbler. The people of the “Cross Roads” neighborhood knew a thing or two. And, besides, they were precedents.
Cause of the Lynching
Events the most spontaneous can usually, with a little investigation, be traced to definite causes. There was a chain of causes leading up to the gruesome spectacle in the clump of trees at the edge of the stubble field. On a certain morning before this, two young men of the district had met two Negroes as they went about their business. Greetings were exchanged. To the indignation of the two young white men, the Negroes addressed them by their given names. Promptly attention was called to this inexcusable breach of respect.
The Negroes were in an ugly mood, and made an insolent answer. A quarrel ensued, but there was no breach of the peace.
The two white men saw in the demeanor of the Negroes a portentous significance. They talked the matter over with a number of friends. All agreed that the temper that the Negroes had shown meant something. Had not a similar disposition been noted on the part of a good many other members of the race previous to this? Was there not a secret organization which held frequent meetings, for what purpose no one knew? Were not the white people likely to suffer seriously from any rising of the Negroes, even though, as a matter of course, the latter would be annihilated in the end?...

“A Southern Judge Commits Them Without Bail,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed September 14, 2026, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/565.