Law Enforcement

The hostility and fear towards Black residents continued after the Civil War. The Tabler family had lived in Athens County since 1830. Michael Tabler, a white man whose father had owned a Virginia plantation, emancipated his enslaved wife and children and moved with them to Ohio to start a new life together in a safer community. The Tablers were farmers who owned land in Tablertown, now known as Kilvert.

Several members of the community had served in the war. Thomas Jefferson Tabler, Jesse Tabler, Michael Tabler, James Tabler and Jerry Sims served in USCT regiments. One community member, Tillman Newman, served in the USCT and was killed at the Battle of New Market Heights.[1] To this generation of Tablers, Athens County was home, and it was a home they had been willing to fight for. Despite that, Athens’ law enforcement proved troublesome for the Tablers after the war.

Athens’ attention turned to Tablertown in 1869, when the Athens Messenger reported a riot in the area, near the Marietta and Cincinnati Railroad. According to the report, a mob broke into a house and assaulted three residents. The Messenger assumed alcohol was the cause of the riot, but further details were not included in the report. Soon after the incident, a man was arrested. He was likely to face heavy penalties; according to the report, “he has a fair chance of being made to pay rather dearly for his frolic.”[2] The details of the incident are unclear because of little reporting, but while the Sentinel was unwilling to condemn white mob activity in Hocking County, Tablertown’s community did not receive the same generous treatment. If law enforcement believed someone in Tablertown had committed a crime, they were punished.

While Tablertown did not experience the same immediate retaliation as Hocking County communities, more run-ins with law enforcement led Athens to view the Tablers with the same race-based assumptions as the accused in Hocking County in the previous decade. John Brown’s Amesville smokehouse was broken into in March 1876, and eleven hams and shoulders were stolen. Local law enforcement suspected the Tablers were the culprits. Law enforcement claimed to follow horse tracks in the snow to Tablertown, where they obtained a search warrant. The search spanned the whole town and continued from Tuesday to Friday. The search yielded eight pieces of meat, as well as many clothing items, “which they supposed to be stolen, but which they felt they were without authority to remove for identification.” Their search turned to the schoolhouse, where they found more clothing items which they assumed had been stolen.

"Justice!" Thomas Nast. Princeton University Library.

During the search, community members gathered, armed with knives, stones, and clubs, to protest the intrusion. One of the law enforcement officers, Mr. Tucker, and the men who had come with him, used “an authoritative and decisive manifestation of firmness”[3] to stop the resistance. Michael Tabler, William Goings, Joseph Crosby, Arnold Lane, Joshua Tabler, Thornton Stewart and William A. Tabler, all Black men, were charged with theft and each man’s bail was set at $400. Three men who were associated with the resistance of the search were fined and each spent five to ten days in jail. Meanwhile, Officer Tucker’s firmness was praised by the local media, while Tablertown was condemned. The town was called “Sodom” and “a lively maul of thieves.”[4] Just as Hocking County had invaded a Black community member’s home space under the assumption that he had committed a crime, Athens County’s law enforcement searched an entire community and confiscated objects unrelated to their original search.

"Slavery is Dead?" Harper's Weekly, January 12, 1867. Princeton University Library.

The arrests continued in following years. Lucinda Stewart and Nancy Tabler were arrested in February 1878 for disturbing a church service. That same month, one of the Tablers was indicted on charges of robbing a grocery store. Tabler was released due to lack of evidence and another Black man was charged, but that did not absolve him of guilt in the eyes of local media. “The colored man Tabler indicted for the same offense got off by turning State’s evidence. It is only a question of time, however, with Tabler, as we don’t believe he could quit stealing if he’d try.”[5] Law enforcement had continued to target Tablertown residents for crime accusations. Another theft-related arrest was made in 1880, when two Black residents of Tablertown were charged with complicity of burglary. While the men had not stolen anything themselves, they were considered guilty by association. The Messenger called them an “organized band of thieves who have for a considerable period been a terror to the region.”[6] Once again, the locals were willing to assign criminal traits to the Tablers even when a crime had not been committed.

Tablertown’s encounters with law enforcement were a result of growing racial post-war tension. Black Americans received the right to citizenship and the right to vote in the decade after the war’s end, and this gave them increased political agency. Additionally, free Black Americans were a growing presence in the workplace, and white Americans saw this new presence as a threat to their economic well-being. The end Reconstruction in the 1870s led to disenfranchisement of Black Americans in the form of federal legislation, voter suppression, failure of unions and businesses to include Black workers, harsher penalties for crimes, and racial violence that was ignored and sometimes protected by the federal government.[7] The increased presence of law enforcement in Tablertown was a form of racism many Black communities experienced across the United States.

Notes

1. Roster of Ohio Troops, p. 602; “Crew of the US Steamer Undine”, 1864; personal papers, David Butcher Collection. People of Color Exhibit, Stewart OH.

2. “Riot at Tabler Town,” Athens Messenger, November 25, 1869; “Arrested,” Athens Messenger, December 16, 1869.

3. “A Smokehouse Robbed,” Athens Messenger, March 23, 1876; “A Lively Maul of Thieves,” Athens Messenger, March 30, 1876.

4. Athens Messenger, “A Smokehouse Robbed”; “A Lively Maul of Thieves.”

5. “Local Matters,” Athens Messenger, February 14, 1878; “Robbery,” Athens Messenger, February 28, 1878.

6. “Local Matters,” Athens Messenger, March 18, 1880.

7. Eric Foner and Joshua Brown. Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction (New York: Knopf, 2005): 186-207.

Image 1: Thomas Nast, “Justice!” Princeton University. Library. Graphic Arts Collection. GA 2008.01758. http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/fq977t91r

Image 2: Thomas Nast, “Slavery is dead(?)” New York: Harper’s Weekly, January 12, 1867. Princeton University. Library. Graphic Arts Collection. GA 2008.01271. http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/fn106z08x