Christopher Davis Lynching

Just as Black communities in urban Ohio experienced greater discrimination in the white-dominated police and legal system, rural Black Ohioans were vulnerable to the judgment of hostile white communities.[1] Black men, especially, were viewed as uneducated and dangerous if they were not controlled by white authorities.[2] Sometimes, as was the case in Springfield in 1906, the conflicts between law enforcement and Black communities could lead to racial violence.[3] As white residents pushed harder to control their Black neighbors and Black communities were not defeated by these attempts, the rift between the racial groups continued to widen. Ultimately, Athens would resort to racial terrorism to regain control.

1881 drawing of Christopher Davis, Ross County Register. Perdreau Collection, Multicultural Genealogical Center.

On the night of November 21, 1881, two white men came to the Athens courthouse, restraining a third white man. The pair claimed they had caught a horse thief and asked the sheriff to open the door to the jail. When he opened the door, the three men, soon joined by others, seized the sheriff and tried to steal his keys. The sheriff had hidden the keys in the waistband of his pants, so the men broke down the cell door. It took them an hour to break down the door.[4] The mob forced a young Black man, Albany resident Christopher Davis, out of his cell and into the cold night. They took him to the South Bridge and, after promising to spare his life in exchange for a confession, they lynched him.[5] Davis was accused of assaulting Lucinda Luckey, a white woman who employed him as a laborer.

According to Luckey’s account, Davis had been at her house on October 30, and since she owed him pay for his work, she gave him money and asked him to buy sealing wax. Between 8 and 9 at night, someone had come to her house and demanded to be let in. The man broke open the door with an axe and assaulted Luckey, leaving her unconscious. The next morning, she accused Davis of being her attacker.[6] When Davis was arrested, the sheriff, fearing mob retaliation, moved Davis to Chillicothe until he was brought to Athens for trial.

Despite the accusation that Davis had attacked Luckey, he was denied due process. While Athens County readily assumed his guilt and the justice of his death, correspondence in the Meigs County Republican debated Davis’ guilt. An anonymous writer, who signed their letters “Fair Play,” recounted evidence that could have proven Davis’ innocence. He recalled that Davis was a respected, well-liked member of the community: “Since he became a man of family, and was better known, he was very highly respected and moral and genteel in his appearance. About three years ago he moved to Athens county, where he engaged in farming as a renter. Here he gained many friends, we learn; but it appears that he had some enemies, all of whom lived in or near that vicinity.”[7]

Fair Play explained that Luckey may have been confused after what she had gone through and may have mistaken another man for Davis since she’d been expecting him. Moreover, Davis had an alibi. His neighbor, Silas Julius, stated that Davis had visited him until after 9 PM, and could be heard singing from his house a quarter of an hour after that. Julius doubted that Davis could have walked the half-mile to Luckey’s house in time to attack her.[8] Fair Play’s letters lament that, if Davis had been given a trial, the evidence of the case may have proved his innocence.

In his letters to the Republican, Fair Play placed partial blame on the newspapers and law enforcement for assuming Davis was guilty. “They did not even say that Davis denied it. Also the Meigs County Telegraph reporter found fault with the Justice of the Peace before whom Davis was tried for not placing the bonds higher, and seemed to encourage the idea that Davis ought to be hung; so did many others, who knew nothing of the circumstance, only what they heard as flying reports, not seeking to find if Davis had any evidence in his favor. No; he was a negro, and MUST be guilty any way it could be fixed.”[9] Fair Play understood that even if evidence had disproved Davis’ guilt, the mob, the Justice of the Peace, and the newspapers were uninterested. They had already condemned him because of his race, and because of his race they believed he did not deserve the due process given to white men.

Fair Play’s perspective proved to be true as newspapers celebrated Davis’ lynching and portrayed him as a criminal. Labels like “colored brute,” “inhuman fiend,” “the negro beast” and “the Ravisher” were used to describe Davis, while the mob were praised as “the best blood of the country,” “brave and bold and heroic” and “brothers and sons.” [10] Some community members agreed: a group of Albany women met shortly after Davis’ lynching and resolved to oppose anyone who prosecuted members of the mob.[11] Some papers saw the lynching as a necessary act in an ineffective law system. The Sentinel reported, “The men who did the Lynching were of the blood, at least of the spirit of the ‘lawless mob’ who, contrary to law, tumbled the tea into Boston harbor, and who behind the rail fences shot at the Red Coats on the King’s highway

Ross County Register report. Perdreau Collection, Multicultural Genealogical Center.

at Lexington, and died in the illegal act of defending Bunker Hill.”[12] To those who celebrated the lynching, it was an act of heroism to deliver justice to a man who was a threat to their community.

Others did not approve of the mob activity as explicitly, but they found ways to excuse it. A Jackson County newspaper used the lynching to draw attention to the shortcomings of the legal justice system, saying, “The pretended administration of justice in this country is a miserable farce, and mob law is the only mode of striking terror into the cowardly hears of murderers. If the next mob would hang a judge or two, a few lawyers and jurors, they might cause a different mode of trials in the future.”[13] This sentiment was echoed in an Athens newspaper:

“Mob rule is certainly much to be deplored […] And yet when we think of this most atrocious crime committed by Davis, and remember how often such men are never brought to justice, or if tried only sentenced to a few years in the Penitentiary to be pardoned out before the time has half expired, can we blame brothers and sons who with a sense of justice and eternal fitness take the law into their own hands and supply its defects or break over its impediments?”[14]

The lynching of Christopher Davis was accepted as a necessary act of justice by the white community. Davis was far from the only victim. Across the United States, white Americans used lynching and other forms of racial terrorism to control and silence Black communities. One of the common reasons for lynching of Black Americans was the accusation that they had been sexually involved with white women. Lynching was used as a method of social control, or often, as a method of intimidation.[15]

The Sentinel (Logan, OH) report.

Through the era of 1877-1950, the Equal Justice Initiative recorded 4,084 lynchings in Southern states and 341 lynchings that were not in Southern states. Fifteen lynchings are recorded in Ohio.[16] Christopher Davis’ death was one of thousands of attempts by white communities to intimidate Black Americans and to maintain control as Black Americans gained agency.

While the response of white locals is well-recorded in newspapers, the Black community’s response is largely unrecorded. While the Athens Messenger suspected Professor Thomas J. Ferguson, an instructor at the Albany Enterprise Academy, of writing the “Fair Play” letters that defended Davis, Ferguson denied involvement.[17] If there was backlash or outrage from the local Black population, its existence has yet to be discovered. The silence of Black Athens residents in the records could be a clue to their response. It is possible that Christopher Davis’ lynching and the threat of further violence frightened them into silence.[18] While there is no record of their response, lynchings were traumatic events for Black Americans as they witnessed the horrific deaths of their friends, neighbors, and family members at the hands of their white neighbors. Lynchings left a deep trauma which many Black Americans were afraid or unable to speak about even decades after the event.[19] It is likely that the legacy of Christopher Davis’ death lingered with locals for decades to come.

The Civil War and its aftermath brought many new opportunities and rights for Black Americans, but new dangers came with them. White Americans feared that their jobs would be taken and their communities would suffer from a Black presence. When Black community members were seen as crossing the boundaries set by racial lines, white Americans often retaliated however they could, whether through the legal system, intimidation, or acts of violence and racial terrorism. In an attempt to maintain pre-war social norms, white Americans deeply traumatized Black communities, and the legacy of those wounds lingered for decades to come.

Notes

1. David A. Gerber, Black Ohio and the Color Line, 287.

2. Quaylan Allen and Henry Santos Metcalf, “’Up to No Good’: The Intersection of Race, Gender, and Fear of Black Men in US Society,” in Travis D. Boyce and Winsome M. Chunnu, eds., Historicizing Fear: Ignorance, Vilification, and Othering (Louisville, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2019), 20-21.

3. David A. Gerber, Black Ohio and the Color Line, 287.

4. “LYNCHED – And Left Dangling from a Bridge. – Christopher Davis Called to Answer for the Crime of Rape. – The Job Performed by a Determined Mob in Athens County,” Sentinel, November 24, 1881. Perdreau Collection, Multicultural Genealogical Center; “There Was the Mob,” Athens Messenger, June 9, 1929.

5. Sentinel, November 24, 1881.

6. “Mrs. Luckey’s Statement,” Meigs County Republican, January 4, 1882. Perdreau Collection, Multicultural Genealogical Center

7. Fair Play, “The Lynching of Davis,” Meigs County Republican, December 14, 1881.

8. Fair Play, “That Lynching of Davis! Justice answered,” Meigs County Republican, January 4, 1882.

9. Meigs County Republican, December 14, 1881.

10. “Moved on Account of His Health,” Cincinnati Enquirer, November 4, 1881; “A Fiendish Outrage and Possible Murder,” Athens Messenger, November 3, 1881; “Judge Lynch in Athens. The People Administer Speedy Justice,” Sentinel, November 21, 1881; “Avenged!” Ross County Register, ca. 1881. Perdreau Collection, Multicultural Genealogical Society; “Mob Law Rules in Athens! The Negro Davis Receives the Dread Sentence, Death! And Is Cast Off into Eternity by an Armed Mob,” Athens Journal, November 24, 1881.

11. “Women Approve of Lynch,” New Philadelphia Democrat, December 22, 1881. Perdreau Collection, Multicultural Genealogical Society

12. Sentinel, November 21, 1881.

13. “Lynching at Athens,” Jackson Standard, December 1, 1881.

14. Athens Journal, November 24, 1881.

15. Randall M. Miller, “Lynching in America: Some Context and a Few Comments,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 72, No. 3 (Summer 2005), 278-279. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27778679.

16. Equal Justice Initiative, Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror. Third Edition. (Montgomery: EJI, 2017), 40-44.

17. “Local Matters,” Athens Messenger, January 12, 1882.

18. Jordan Zdinak, email correspondence, February 23, 2021.

19. Equal Justice Initiative, Lynching in America, 68-69.

Image 1: Ross County Register, Christopher Davis Portrait. Perdreau Collection, Multicultural Genealogical Center.

Image 2: Ross County Register report. Perdreau Collection, Multicultural Genealogical Center.

Image 3: “Judge Lynch in Athens,” Hocking County Sentinel, November 24, 1881. Microfilm scan.