A Road That Ends in Silence
I recently drove toward the Chickasawhay River, searching for a place many would rather forget: Shubuta.
This story has always felt close to me. My maternal grandmother, Eva Haney Moore, was from Shubuta before moving to Newton County. Through family lines, I am a distant relative of the two House, also spelled Howze, sisters who were hanged there.
This is not distant history—it is personal.
As I approached the site of the infamous Hanging Bridge, the road did not simply fade away. It was blocked by a firm, deliberate gate and a sign warning visitors to proceed no further.
Beyond it, the bridge stood barely visible—choked by brush, disappearing into the Mississippi landscape.
“That gate is more than a barrier; it is a metaphor for a century of silence.”
Beyond the Labels: They Were Children
The newspaper accounts from December 1918 use language meant to justify murder. Major Clarke is called a “confessed assassin.” The others are reduced to “conspirators.”
But the census records tell the truth:
They were children.
Major and Andrew Clarke
In 1910, they were 14 and 11. They were students. They were literate—an achievement that carried both promise and risk in the Jim Crow South.
Maggie and Alma House
Alma was just nine in 1910. By 1918, Maggie was approximately 22 and Alma was 17.
Most tragically, Maggie House was pregnant. She was carrying a life when her own was taken.
“By the time they were killed, they had not yet been allowed to fully live.”
The “Crime” and the Contradictions
Dr. E. L. Johnston, a wealthy retired dentist from Mobile and the children’s employer, was shot in the back while milking a cow in his barn.
The official story claimed Major Clarke shot him, disposed of the gun, and then ran to get a physician.
Even in its own telling, the narrative raises questions.
Contemporary reports provide no clear explanation for this contradiction, and like many cases in the Jim Crow South, the full truth may never be known. Some local traditions and later interpretations have suggested deeper tensions between the victim and the young people involved—particularly given the power dynamics between a white employer and Black workers in this period.
What is certain is this:
“Whatever happened in that barn, justice was never allowed to happen in a courtroom.”
Mob Justice: What Actually Happened
Before any trial could take place, a mob intervened.
On the night of December 20, 1918:
- The jailer was called into the street
- He was handcuffed
- He was forced to surrender the jail keys
The mob entered the jail, seized the four prisoners, and placed them into automobiles.
They were driven to the bridge over the Chickasawhay River.
They were hanged from its steel girders.
Their bodies were left hanging through the night.
“This was not justice. This was a message.”
No one was arrested.
A coroner’s jury returned the familiar verdict:
“Death at the hands of unknown persons.”
The NAACP and a Nation Watching
The horror at Shubuta reached beyond Mississippi.
The NAACP responded immediately, placing the lynching within a broader national crisis.
At the time:
- 103 lynchings had occurred since the U.S. entered World War I
- 26 had occurred after President Woodrow Wilson publicly condemned lynching
The NAACP demanded action.
But the response was silence.
“Even national outrage could not break the local protection of mob violence.”
The Final Resting Place: A Question of Memory
Even in death, uncertainty followed them.
Some reports suggest the victims were returned to their communities in Clarke County for burial.
Another newspaper mentions a burial site in Hattiesburg, described only as a “Negro grave.”
The lack of clarity is telling.
“Even their resting place was treated as an afterthought.”
The Great Migration Was Survival
When we talk about the Great Migration, we often speak of opportunity.
But places like Shubuta tell a different story.
This was not just movement.
It was escape.
The Clarke family in 1910 was rooted, stable, established.
But when children could be taken from a jail and executed without trial, stability became an illusion.
“You didn’t leave for opportunity—you left to survive.”
Why This Place Must Not Disappear
We cannot allow that bridge to vanish beneath the weight of neglect.
When a place becomes inaccessible, history becomes abstract.
The overgrowth is not just natural—it is symbolic.
It is erasure.
Preserving this site is not about revisiting trauma.
It is about refusing to let the mob have the final word.
It is about remembering:
- That Major and Andrew could read and write
- That Maggie and Alma were young women with futures
- That these were lives—not headlines
We Must Keep Going Back
We must keep talking about Shubuta.
We must keep telling their names.
We must keep driving toward that gate—even when it is closed.
Because memory does not live in iron and wood alone.
“It lives in those who refuse to forget.”
Newspaper Accounts (December 1918)
- “Dr. Vic Johnson Shot by Assassin,” Jackson Daily News (Jackson, Mississippi), December 10, 1918.
- “Negro Admits to Killing Dentist,” Stone County Enterprise (Wiggins, Mississippi), December 14, 1918.
- “Major Clark, 19-Year-Old Negro, Confessed Assassin…,” The Jones County News (Laurel, Mississippi), December 19, 1918.
- “Four Negroes Taken from Jail and Hung,” The Free Press (likely Mississippi), December 19, 1918.
- “Lynching at Shubuta: Four Give Up Lives for Dentist’s Death,” The Vicksburg Post (Vicksburg, Mississippi), December 21, 1918.
- “Mob Binds Deputy; Hangs 4 Negroes,” Sun Herald (Biloxi, Mississippi), December 21, 1918.
- “Mississippi News: Happenings Over Commonwealth…,” Natchez Democrat (Natchez, Mississippi), December 21–22, 1918.
- “Demands Know Steps That Are to Be Taken,” Natchez Democrat (Natchez, Mississippi), December 21, 1918.
- “Lynching at Shubuta…Coroner’s Verdict,” Macon Beacon (Macon, Mississippi), December 20, 1918.
- Additional regional coverage appeared in Associated Press reports circulated throughout Mississippi and neighboring states in December 1918.
Federal Records
- 1910 U.S. Census, Clarke County, Mississippi (Enterprise area), households of the Clarke and House families.
(Used to establish ages, literacy status, and family structure of Major Clarke, Andrew Clarke, Maggie House, and Alma House.)
Organizational and National Context
- National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), telegrams and public statements reported in newspapers, December 1918, protesting the Shubuta lynching and documenting national lynching statistics during and after World War I.
- Contemporary references to President Woodrow Wilson’s July 21, 1918 public appeal against lynching, cited in newspaper coverage of NAACP protests.
Interpretive Notes
- The repeated use of terms such as “confessed assassin” in contemporary reporting reflects the racialized language of the Jim Crow press and should not be taken at face value without corroborating evidence.
- Alleged confessions reported in 1918 newspapers were often obtained under conditions that are undocumented and potentially coercive.
- Conflicting reports regarding burial locations—Clarke County versus a reference to a “Negro grave” in Hattiesburg—highlight the fragmentary and often dismissive nature of recordkeeping for Black victims of racial violence.
- The lynching at Shubuta must be understood within the broader context of early twentieth-century racial terror, where mob violence functioned as a tool of social control rather than justice.
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