WC Remembrance Coalition tells the story of two heroes at final Teach-In

MILAN BUSH AND MICAH LYNN led a presentation and public discussion of the dual lynchings of William Turpin and James Parker on August 1, 1870, on the streets of Versailles at the WC Remembrance Coalition’s last Teach-In at the Woodford County Library. (Photo by Sioux Finney)

By Scott White

Woodford Sun Staff

Two remarkable Black men, both former slaves, were lynched on August 10, 1870, outside of their homes by a mob of 15-20 masked men.

Their story was the focus of the fourth and final “Teach-In” conducted by Milan Bush and Micah Lynn of the Woodford County Remembrance Coalition (WCRC), and held at the Woodford County Library on Sunday, June 7. This article is based entirely on the presentation of Bush and Lynn.

The WCRC has been actively working with the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), located in Montgomery, Alabama, to erect memorials to the four known lynching victims in Woodford County. This is the conclusion of the first phase of the project, with an announcement coming soon on the next step . . . a ceremony to collect the soil from the locations of the lynching and transporting that to EJI’s Legacy Museum which, as it says on its website, exists to honor and memorialize the thousands of lynching victims as well as “offer(ing) a powerful, immersive journey through America’s history of racial injustice.”

The story told at the Teach-In of the 1870 victims is complicated by the fact that one of the two men cannot be definitively identified due to the use of two names for the same man, the scant public records, that there was no criminal prosecution of the criminals who took part in the lynchings so there is no court or law enforcement records, and the primary source of the event was a racially-biased newspaper, the Woodford Weekly (the predecessor of the Sun). More on who this person is later.

First, the other victim is known. William Turpin, who was enslaved by Acquetta Fleming, enlisted in the 12th U.S. Colored Troops (USCT) at Camp Nelson in Jessamine County in September 1864, and served as quartermaster sergeant in his company. Following the war, Turpin married Harriet and they had four children, and he became a Methodist minister owning his own home valued at $300 on Clifton Road in Versailles.

The other victim is problematic as reports of the time identified the man both as Thomas Harper and James Parker. Micah, using census records, USCT archives and scouring possible other sources, opines that the victim was James Parker. Using the records of the 12th USCT, Lynn found a James Parker, who was related to Levi Parker of Woodford County, who also served in the 12th USCT. “I’d like to think there was a Turpin and James Parker serving together (in the 12th), and (the lynching victim) was that James Parker,” he said. “I can’t say for sure . . . but it’s more likely that he’s the Parker (who) was lynched in Versailles.”

As Lynn pointed out, the context of the lynching and the events leading up to it provides significant insight into the reasons the mob acted to murder the two men.

During the war, over 700 of about 6,000 Woodford Countians of color served in the USCT, with nearly 500 of those enlisting at Camp Nelson. The federal Freedman’s Bureau, created in the immediate aftermath of the war to regulate the transition of Blacks from slave to free, had an agent in Versailles who, among other duties, was tasked with recording incidents of anti-Black violence and taking affidavits. The agent reported that Woodford County “quickly became a place of routine racial violence as well as routine resistance, even martial resistance.” The records of the agent are replete with examples of violence towards Blacks in Woodford County. One notable example of the accuracy of the report was in September 1868, when some Klansmen attacked two Black women in Versailles. After petitioning the community for help, a group of armed Black men rode to the house where the Klansmen were staying, and the Versailles town marshal brokered a peace by arresting the Klansmen. In short, Blacks in Woodford County were prepared to defend themselves.

The election held in August 1870 was the first after the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, one of the Reconstruction Amendments, which ensured the right to vote of “citizen’s race, color or previous condition of servitude (enslavement).” The amendment was strongly opposed throughout the South, including Kentucky Democrats and the Woodford Weekly.

In this election, the Democrats were viewed as the party of the dominant white class, and Republicans, Lincoln’s party, were deemed “radicals” who were on the side of Blacks and a threat to the culture and powers of Woodford County.

By the time of the election, Turpin had become both a political and religious leader in the county. He endorsed William Steele, a white (and, ironically, a former slaveholder) for county judge. As election day, August 1, approached, tension was percolating in the community. Blacks were organizing themselves for the vote, including drilling church congregants to march to the polls as soon as they opened and in a large group . . . a common mechanism used throughout the South by Blacks to do all they could to ensure their ability to freely vote. Learning of this, Versailles local government requested that “colored voters do not march through the streets to the polls,” and more policemen were put on duty, and even federal troops from Lexington were brought in on July 30 and 31 to patrol the streets in a show of force. Even so, Blacks held a large political barbecue on the 30th, which further raised fears amongst whites.

Election day itself saw Blacks “hold the polls” for the first three hours, and a scuffle resulted in a Black man being shot and injured. Despite the efforts of Black voters, the Democrats won the county judge race.

But tensions did not subside. The day after the election, a Black man and Samuel Crusoe, a white Versailles resident, was engaged in a political discussion downtown, when Crusoe, according to Lynn, “shooed the man off to which the Black man replied ‘the street was as much his as any white man’s.’” Lynn pointed out this was a radical statement for a Black man to make to a white, particularly in public. Crusoe clearly felt so, because he assaulted the man with a gun, injuring him.

This was the trigger. After the local authorities only fined Crusoe instead of arresting him, a group of armed Black men surrounded Crusoe’s house, demanding his surrender. He refused, and the men allegedly burned his crops that night. Fearing reprisals, the Black group blockaded the entrance to Versailles at Shryock’s Ferry and Clifton Road. A local company of the Kentucky State Guards, armed from the State Armory, rode from Midway and put the demonstration down.

On August 4, the Woodford Weekly wrote about this saying, “This is a serious state of things. The courts are open to all who have been aggrieved, and if black men do not like to trust our state tribunals, the federal courts are at their service. The law can give better redress than they can wrest, but they prefer to pass by the legal modes of avenging real or supposed wrong and applying the torch . . . . This is the work of the Fifteenth Amendment, and these are the fruits of the federal government interfering in local affairs…. This state of affairs cannot exist here.”

Lynn pointed out that this article in the Woodford Weekly, which in its pages described itself as the voice of the Democratic party and principals, perfectly summarized the state of affairs in Woodford County— the whites in power were not going to accede to any meaningful involvement of Black citizens in the political sphere and were determined to maintain the white-controlled status quo.

The next Wednesday, August 10, 15 to 20, masked members of the Kentucky State Guard from Midway rode first to Parker’s house, where they forced him outside and shot him dead. They then rode to Turpin’s home, and while he was trying to escape, he was also shot dead.

Turpin and Parker were lynched on the streets of Versailles (a lynching includes killings other than a hanging, such as shooting with a gun).

The riders then went on to threaten other Black political leaders, which Lynn said the evidence suggests led to an exodus of Blacks from the county, “which was essentially a coup by taking away any possible influence they could have in future elections and civic life.”

The Woodford County press, which was the Weekly and the Bluegrass Clipper in Midway (which didn’t cover the lynchings at all), reacted in a way that enabled this type of terroristic activity – sympathetic to whites and demeaning to Blacks. Here is what the Weekly said following the lynchings about Parker and Turpin, “Turpin had the reputation of being a dictator among the negroes– a leader of iron will . . . He appeared to be about 45 years old; an ugly, repulsive negro, of the lower stratum of the cornfield variety.” And, of Parker, “He is represented as a man of no virtue of any sort hardly, but full of evil designs, and a pliant tool in the hands of the crafty. He was about 40 years old.”

Though there were a total of four known lynchings here, the other two covered by previous Teach-Ins, Lynn, a doctoral student in history at Emory University, said the dual Turpin-Parker lynchings are significant to understanding the need to know the full and accurate history, and to engage in a reconciliation process.

“To me, (the Turpin and Parker lynchings) really typifies so many of the contradictions of America and Kentucky as a state with issues of political representation, adequate legal protections and protests seeking to enforce recognition of rights,” he said. “These are issues we are still clearly dealing with today.”

The Woodford Sun is a member of the Woodford County Remembrance Coalition.