John Shearer: Remembering Covering The Ed Johnson Story In The ‘80s And ‘90s

As plans are moving forward for a memorial to honor 1906 black lynching victim Ed Johnson by the Walnut Street Bridge, I started thinking about the times decades ago when I wrote about him.

 

One or two stories were historical articles, but on a couple of other occasions in the 1990s, I chronicled other people’s interest in his story.

And once I reported on a now mostly forgotten effort to memorialize him, a gesture that actually became surprisingly controversial until the disagreement was later resolved in an amicable manner.

 

Thinking about all this following the various other media stories about him and his story in recent days even prompted me to visit the old Pleasant Gardens Cemetery by Missionary Ridge Friday and locate his grave again.

 

The first time I came across his name was in 1984, when I was just beginning as a staff writer for the old Chattanooga News-Free Press at the age of 24. I was already getting interested in local history then, and one of the first historical stories I wrote dealt with the Walnut Street Bridge.

 

Having favorably remembered driving across it before it was closed in 1978, I thought a story about the bridge would make for interesting reading, especially since a lot of people liked the landmark span with a then-uncertain future.

 

Not sure of all the ways to find historical information at the time, I simply looked in a copy of colleague John Wilson’s book, “Chattanooga’s Story,” published in 1980. While he had a lot of history about the bridge opening in 1891 and other information, I also came across a passage discussing the lynching/hanging of Mr. Johnson in 1906.

 

Mr. Johnson had been convicted – wrongly, most believe – of raping white woman Nevada Taylor near Forest Hills Cemetery, but his execution had been delayed so that the Supreme Court could hear an appeal in the case. However, a mob broke into the county jail and dragged him to the Walnut Street Bridge and hanged him before due process could run its course.

 

Besides of course being hurtful to the black community, it was an action also criticized by the newspapers and many white Chattanoogans at the time. As one paper said, “The city of Chattanooga is shamed and humiliated as never before by the event of last night.”

 

Anyway, I wrote about that in the story and considered it an important historical chapter. However, that fact did not personally change my mostly positive views of the bridge as a nice piece of architecture and a passageway that has literally and figuratively connected all Chattanoogans, even though I now understand the negative connotations for some people.

 

Thinking about the lynching being chronicled in Mr. Wilson’s book and having written about it in 1984 also made me this week want to see what else had been written around that time. However, not much could be found in the newspaper clippings on file at the Chattanooga Public Library downtown.

 

Among other books from that time period, though, Dr. James Livingood’s 1981 book “Hamilton,” which was part of a Tennessee County History Series published by Memphis State University Press, devotes several paragraphs to the lynching, too.

 

Dr. Livingood actually went into detail about black and white issues and Jim Crow laws at the time.

 

He mentioned that in 1892, the Hamilton county sheriff went above the call of duty in trying to protect a black man charged with assaulting a white woman, moving the accused man to numerous jails as protection.

 

Chattanooga also held a meeting about that time trying to prevent mob rule over racial incidents, he wrote.

 

However, Dr. Livingood chronicled that more trouble ensued, and he mentioned two other lynchings of blacks in the area – that of Alfred Blount in 1893, and Charles Brown in Soddy in 1894.

 

Among the newspaper stories, longtime Chattanooga Times columnist Bill Casteel wrote a story about the case in 1993 in his occasional series of stories on Chattanooga’s history.

 

Also in 1993, the restored Walnut Street Bridge was getting ready to open on May 1 amid much fanfare and planned celebrations. After much discussion, the consensus had been that Chattanoogans wanted to see the bridge turned into a pedestrian park and become part of the newly evolving riverfront one year after the Tennessee Aquarium opened.

 

In a well-intentioned sign of goodwill, bridge reopening celebration organizers led by Jim Gallagher and Jeff Boehm had planned to dedicate a memorial plaque. It was to recognize Mr. Johnson, three workers killed when the bridge was under construction more than 100 years before, and a man who died in the 1990s renovation work.

 

While National Association for the Advancement of Colored People local head James Mapp and others appreciated the gesture, they thought it was inappropriate that Mr. Johnson be part of what was going to be a bridge celebration weekend.

 

This was in part due to the fact that a black man named Larry Powell had died recently while in the custody of Hamilton County and Soddy-Daisy police officers.

 

The NAACP also wanted Mr. Johnson’s family to be contacted, and desired that a local black group have input on any such plaque and that a separate remembrance for Mr. Johnson be held at a different time.

 

The NAACP also planned to hold a candlelight vigil the night before the bridge reopening to emphasize how remembering Mr. Johnson should be a somber event.

 

Some first-class diplomacy quickly took place, though, because a few days later I attended a press conference in which Mr. Boehm announced that the plans for the memorial plaque were to be scrapped.

 

He said that a series of historically focused markers were to be erected in the future, but for now the focus was on the entire city coming together in a harmonious way to celebrate the reopening of the bridge.

 

I remember how much more convivial Mr. Mapp – a local civil rights pioneer -- was regarding the planned celebration than he had been a few days before.

 

In 1997 – after the Walnut Street Bridge was becoming such a popular downtown draw – Mike Webb, a traveling salesman then in his late 30s, contacted the paper, or vice versa. He said with excitement that he had found the grave of Mr. Johnson in the Pleasant Gardens Cemetery.

 

I interviewed him and he said he got interested in the case while taking an urban history class from Dr. James Russell at UTC. He ended up writing a long senior tutorial paper on the subject.

 

If memory serves me correctly, I met him and his son at the cemetery with photographer Angela Lewis, and he showed us where the grave was, saying he had earlier found it almost by accident.

 

He had also inquired with the National Archives, and said it was full of letters from Chattanoogans who felt Mr. Johnson had been treated unfairly in the case.

 

I wrote my story about his interest in the case and discovery of the grave, and even gave to the library a copy of his lengthy paper. I had actually forgotten about the latter step until I looked in the files several days ago and it was still there, with my handwriting saying it came from Mr. Webb.

 

I happened to be talking with Vilma Fields of the Chattanooga African-American Museum at the Bessie Smith Hall not long after that story ran, and she said that I should have contacted them, that they already knew where Mr. Johnson’s grave was.

 

I guess that showed there was perhaps some disconnect between black and white Chattanoogans over black history at the time.

 

Also not long after that story ran, I received a call one night at the paper from Leroy Phillips, the noted Chattanooga criminal lawyer. He said he was working on a book about the Ed Johnson case and was wondering how to get in touch with Mr. Webb to find the grave.

 

I passed along Mr. Webb’s phone number or contact info that I still had at the time. And before hanging up, I told Mr. Phillips I had enjoyed following his law career with admiration over the years.

 

Mr. Phillips thanked me, and that was the one and only time I talked with the now-deceased attorney.

 

Then, in 1999, after I had left the Free Press following its merger with the Times, I read that Mr. Phillips and local journalist Mark Curriden had written the book, “Contempt of Court,” about the case. And that praised book has no doubt led to the attention that has seemed to build in recent years to both reverse Mr. Johnson’s conviction, which was done, and to build the memorial.

 

Looking back this week at the first article written by Mark Kennedy and another Times Free Press staff writer about the book, I saw for the first time a picture of Mr. Phillips and Mr. Webb standing by the grave.

 

So I guess Mr. Phillips was able to get in touch with him after all. I also wonder if Mr. Webb is following all the plans to build the memorial or if he is involved with them.

 

What is known is that today a growing number of Chattanoogans seem to still be following the case of Mr. Johnson. This man who was scorned by some in life over what were apparently false accusations is now being greatly honored in death more than 100 years after the tragic incident.

 

That became evident when I decided on Friday to see if I could find his grave at Pleasant Gardens Cemetery.

 

The cemetery itself is quite an interesting place to visit. It almost seems to be in a vacuum or time warp inconspicuously sitting off Rowe Road adjacent to and contrasting sharply with the Shepherd Hills subdivision of well-taken-care-of homes and perfectly manicured lawns.

 

The historic black cemetery does stand out in history books in that it also has the graves of two of the apparently wrongly accused young black male defendants in the famous Scottsboro Boys assault case of the 1930s.

 

While appearing unkempt to an observer, the cemetery has actually been kept up somewhat – or at least kept from being overtaken by vegetation -- by interested people in recent decades, according to news reports and a good look.

 

On this day, a few daffodils were still in bloom, a few wildflowers were coming out, and some dogwood tree blossoms were about to open. Life seemed to be apparent in this place honoring the dead.

 

My main goal was to find the grave of Mr. Johnson, and after walking through the grounds for a few moments and becoming frustrated, I found it on my second pass. Located near the very back part of the cemetery, I located it primarily because it was the only grave in the tree-covered cemetery with a couple of bright artificial flowers around it.

 

Because of my efforts to find it that seemed to be futile for a few minutes and because of his story, I became almost a little emotional when I located the grave.

 

His marker now stands up and is no longer lying on its side, as was the case in the 1990s when I last saw it. And the flowers – and, of course, all the media attention – made it obvious to me that he is a lot bigger deal than maybe he was in the collective minds of Chattanoogans a few decades ago, when his story had been largely forgotten to the average citizen.

 

His grave is actually a pretty marker. At the top, it says “Farewell” above two hands grasped together, and then “God Bless you all, I Am A Innocent Man” below that.

 

It then has his name, Ed. Johnson, his birth year of 1882 and his death date of March 19, 1906. At the bottom is another inscription that says, “Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord,” an apparent reference to his reportedly being saved during a church service near the end of his life.

 

It is an obviously deeply thought out tribute placed on one slender stone block.

 

I then walked the 200-300 yards back to my car, thinking how tranquil it was in this cemetery where he now lies.

 

Supporters of the planned memorial by the south end of the bridge hope the sculpture provides a sense of tranquility, too – at least of the inward kind over a long-ago tragic incident that still creates an open wound for some.

 

Jcshearer2@comcast.net