(soft music) - I think people have slowly come to the fact that you need to tell these stories (soft music) (engine humming) (soft music) I always promised Miss Mattie Bell, she said, "If I give you this Bible, you gotta promise me you'll tell this story."

I knew Miss Mattie Bell as a kid, you know, 'cause her and my grandmother grew up down in Olmstead, and Miss Mattie Bell got sick.

They thought she was going to die.

And they sold her house.

They sold her car.

They sold her furniture.

All they didn't sell was her books and papers and pictures and stuff like that They boxed that up.

After she pulled through, they got her a house up on 6th Street up on this end, wasn't no more than a block from us.

So they had these boxes, some pictures and stuff, like personal stuff.

I was helping them put books up and in this one box, there was this Bible and it just fell to this page.

And it had these four men that had got killed on the same day.

And I said, "Miss Mattie Bell, what happened to 'em?

Did they burn up in a fire or something?"

She said, "No boy, they were lynched."

I said, "Miss Mattie Bell, what's lynched?"

My grandma said, "Leave Mattie Bell alone.

You just meddle all the damn time.

Just meddle, you just leave Mattie Bell alone."

And that the end of it that day, but I got back up there and tried talking to Miss Mattie Bell and talking to Miss Mattie Bell but that's where I got started on Rufus Browder.

And the funniest thing about it, the Bible never mentioned Rufus Browder.

It just mentioned these four guys that got lynched.

(soft music) (blues music) Rufus Browder was a young man who was born down in Olmstead to Fletcher Browder and Rufus' family lived down the road from Cunningham, and Rufus just went to work as a farm hand.

Now, Cunningham didn't own the farm.

He was just the overseer of the farm.

The farm belonged to Dr. Jesse Russell.

Cunningham's wife's family owned some of Rufus' family during slavery.

Browder worked for Cunningham for about a year, until one day, they got in an argument over wages.

(blues music) - When slavery ended, 1865, 1866 for a lot of the ex-slaves, many of them stayed in the very same communities, again, that was home for them, where they had been slaves.

And so, that meant, in most of these instances, working out relationships with the very people who had owned them.

(blues music) (singer vocalizing) That was a real fear and a real problem after the Civil War, or perceived to be a potential problem was controlling the Black labor.

How can we extract that labor when they're free and they're not forced to work for us?

(blues music) (singer vocalizing) So, there are a variety of tactics that were used to keep Blacks on plantations, things like share cropping and crop land systems or this debt peonage that, after having buying tools or having to take loans from different store owners to buy tools or from the landowner for things like animals that, even after working the entire year, they still don't have enough to pay off these debts for these things from the profits that they make through agriculture.

So, those are more kind of coercive tactics, (blues music) (singer vocalizing) kind of from slave owner to employer, so still controlling labor, but different types and different manifestations of that - By and large, it meant that they would be working for their ex-slave owners.

And then on the other circumstances, where the landowner was taking advantage of them and also had the power structure to back that up, it meant that these people would be mired in a situation where it would be very difficult for them to ever get out of.

- A lot of them never sit with the connections.

A lot of people's connections with the slave people existed after slavery on up into the early 1900s.

You know, what were you going to do?

You know, eventually when slavery was over and you're free but with that freedom, what did you get beside freedom?

You still had to eat.

You still had to live.

You still had to have shelter.

So, a lot of people just went to work for the people who they were slaves for and stayed there a few more generations.

(slow music) (gentle piano music) This has always been my home.

My family was always down here.

It's always been my home, but it was rough, and it wasn't only rough on us.

It was rough on just about everybody down here.

There wasn't a whole bunch of people down here had no money.

Most of the people down here were poor.

A lot of 'em were uneducated.

Most of the people here were maids or farm workers or something like that.

They didn't have a whole lot.

Like I said, it was rough on us, but it was a nice community.

It was good.

And then at night, you had your joints, you know?

At night it would fill up with just cars everywhere.

And I lived across the street with my grandmother when I was younger.

And so, she would go to sleep, and I would cross my legs, get on this table and just look out the door and watch all these people everywhere.

And I'd tell somebody, it looked like the building next door used to be over, looked like it was swelling.

There'd be people (laughs) everywhere.

(guitar strumming) I'm kind of embarrassed, but it was so funny.

One night, the guy he had hired me and this guy to work the door right here, a little like a disco.

'Cause back in the late '70s and early '80s, you had these discos.

And so, he hired us to work the door.

He gave us $25 in ones, and we were working the door, and people were coming in.

Well, I knew I couldn't count, but I was thinking that the other guy he hired could count.

So, it would cover for me not being able to count (laughs).

And people are coming in.

It was crowded, people were everywhere.

The place was full.

And so, he come and ask for the money.

I think we gave him about $20.

He said, "Where's the money at?"

And we looked at each other and this guy had come told him, I didn't realize till years later that the guy come told him that we couldn't count.

We were giving away, people giving us 20, and we giving 'em $30 (laughs) and stuff.

And he looked at us.

He said, "Y'all, can't count!

So, that mean you can't read.

What the hell is going on here?"

And after it was over, I was feeling so bad.

I guess he tried to cheer me up.

He said, "Well, if you can't read, you can learn how to read."

He gave me a book, and I ain't never forgot it.

It was called "The Spook Who Sat by the Door" and a dictionary.

And he said, "Take this and read it.

And what you don't understand, you holler at me about."

The guy who owned the building found out about it.

And I guess they just figured that I worked good enough cleaning up and doing around that they'd keep me and let me work and learn as I go.

And I would just sit back in the kitchen with a dictionary and read.

So, I kind of taught myself how to read.

I like history.

So, I'd read about history, government, law.

Pretty much all I read, history, government and law.

Well, the History of Logan County is where I first went, the little blue book.

And when Coffman done that history, he mentions the lynching and he mentions Rufus Browder.

And that's kind of where I found out about that.

And then I just slowly started putting stuff together.

(blues music) There were share croppers, but I don't think Rufus and them were necessarily sharecroppers.

'Cause they were day laborers, and the day labor would go work for a certain person in the daytime and get paid a certain amount.

One day, they got to arguing over wages.

Rufus wanted to get off, he said to go to Allensville, which was probably 10, 12 miles from where the farm was to get some medicine for his wife, and Cunningham had first told him it was all right, but then he came back later on and told me he wanted him to work till 5:00.

Rufus has told him, if he waited till 5:00, he'd missed a train to get the Allensville, and Cunningham told Rufus, if he left before 5:00, he would dock his pay.

It would've been a lot for someone at that time period.

And Rufus' argument is that you gonna dock me a quarter?

But I ain't making a quarter.

(laughs) So you gonna dock me more than what I'm making.

So, Rufus ended up leaving before 5:00, I think, and got the medicine.

He stopped off in, I think it was Monroe town's, for a frolic as they called it, which was probably a modern day party, barn dance or something.

And he stayed there and he came home.

This was probably Friday.

(slow music) - We see, throughout history, whether you're talking about the era of enslavement or the era of Jim Crow, lots of acts of individual resistance by Black Americans to what they deem to be white oppression.

And the overseer's desire to dock Rufus more than a day's pay as a punitive measure is a really great example of this.

I mean, his request is very reasonable.

It's certainly anything a reasonable person can understand His wife is sick.

She needs medicine.

But he is told, as a way to control him, that he can't do it, and he's given this incredibly punitive measure.

So, we don't know the rest of the employment history.

There are so many things about this story that we don't know.

We don't know what the long term relationship between these two men is, but whatever it was, this is the moment where Rufus Browder says, "I have to resist this."

Perhaps it is to save his wife's life.

Maybe he does think it's in danger or maybe he's had it.

Maybe he's done.

And this is the moment that he chooses to resist, whether consciously or unconsciously.

And he walks out.

And this is the moment when the white overseer knows that he's overplayed his hand and it didn't work.

And what happens next?

So, he has to do something.

If he doesn't do something, then his Black employee will have gotten away with it.

And the power dynamic shifts.

So that's really what's at stake here.

And that's what's at stake in many situations where it escalates to violence.

The idea that resistance leads to another action.

(solemn music) - Monday morning, when he got up, he seen Cunningham.

And he said he was putting a buggy in the buggy house.

And he went out and talked to Cunningham.

What exactly went on nobody really knows.

Browder's the only one live to tell about it.

And he said, Cunningham had told him that if his wife wasn't sick, he would put him off the farm.

Then Cunningham asked Rufus, "Do you know where we stand?"

And I think Rufus said, "Yeah, you owe me about 50 cent or a quarter" or something like that.

He said, "Yeah, it's right."

And then that was the end of it.

Rufus went back to his cabin, which was behind Cunningham's house, and Cunningham stayed working in the little buggy house.

Rufus came out of the house and went back to the buggy house and Cunningham told him again that if his wife wasn't so sick, I'd put you, no, he said, "I'm gonna call the doctor and see how your wife is doing.

And if she's alright, I want you to get off the place."

And Rufus said, "Don't.

You have 30 days or something to get off."

And Cunningham told Rufus that he didn't care about that He didn't care about that 'cause he didn't like his darn way of doing things, something like that.

And Rufus said, "Well, hell, I don't like your darn way of doing things."

Rufus said, because Rufus was the only person living, that Cunningham hit him with a hitch ring.

And then they both drew their pistols and shot each other.

(gunshots popping) After that happened, Rufus ran to his father's house and hid, and Cunningham fell in the road and died.

(slow music) - There comes a point where a person can say, "Enough," that this is unfair.

My understanding is that Rufus Browder had reached that point and was ready to then no longer remain in that relationship.

Cunningham, of the records I read, said, "Hit him with a whip."

Okay, so if you hit someone with a whip, and eventually you go to doctors, that can be documented.

Okay, that alone, if Browder had been white, would have justified him shooting and killing Cunningham.

That alone would have been enough, but it did not end there.

Again, in Louisville, they do know that he has a wound that has to be addressed.

So, he has been shot.

So, that means, what more?

He's been hit with a whip.

He's been shot.

That is more than enough by the laws of American society for this, for whatever action Rufus Browder takes.

Rufus Browder, then fearing for his life, and let's say, frankly, probably fed up with all of this, who wouldn't be?

He then shoots back and he kills Cunningham.

(contemplative music) - Running is the only thing that Rufus Browder can do because he is a Black man who has just shot a white man who is his employer.

And he knows that, no matter what happens to him, whether it's a lynch mob or it's an all white jury, he's not going to be acquitted.

And they're not going to see this as self defense.

And he knows that.

I mean, rationally and emotionally, he knows that.

So of course, he runs.

It's the only logical decision.

(blues music) - This is Olmstead, Kentucky, southern part of Kentucky in 1908.

Logan County by 1908 had already had about probably eight or 10 lynchings.

It was the smart thing to do, because if they catch you, not the law, but the people, if they catch you, more than likely they're going to kill you.

You have killed a white man.

This is taboo.

So, the smart thing was his life, if you want your life, even though you are right.

(contemplative music) The neighborhoods all start coming to Cunningham's house.

Once they found out what go, what had went on, they start forming little groups and posses to go out and look for Rufus to arrest him.

I think Judge Edwards got the call about 6:00 or 6:30 in the morning, then he called Sheriff Tom Rhea, and Rhea called his Deputy O'Connell.

And they took a train down to Allensville.

And then, from Allensville, they rented a buggy, and they went to the Cunningham's house.

When they got there, they found out about the murder and what all had happened and that there were people out looking for Rufus.

- Rufus Browder had to understand the racial dynamics of that day.

And he has now killed this man, and that alone causes him a problem.

And so, I can understand his fleeing because he realizes he's now put himself in great risk.

But I think his fleeing does not mean, and I would think most, at least African Americans back then, would have understood his fleeing does not mean that he's guilty.

Again, there are two things that would document that something had happened.

Cunningham could not have shot him after he was already dead, in that regard, and the hitting him with the whip, it would be very difficult to hit him with the whip after he's been shot.

So, it shows that Cunningham was involved in that regard, even if you somehow concocted it to say where Browder had been the aggressor, in that regard, but it still would've meant they had a confrontation.

And when something like that happens, at the very least, surely that's self-defense, justifiable homicide or something, other than just plain murder.

(slow music) - So, the sheriff went to Fletcher Browder, who was Rufus' father's house, to see if he could find him.

And when he got there, there were some Blacks standing around.

They searched all the Blacks.

They didn't find any weapons on them.

They just found cartridges.

Then they later, after they searched, then they went in and searched the house and found two or three pistols.

And they confiscated them.

When Sheriff Rhea came out, he left guards there at Fletcher's house.

So, he left and he went, I think he went toward, they call it John Poor's Store or something like that.

And he was planning on getting some lunch.

Before he got there though, he stopped at this creek.

(water trickling) And at this creek, these men started coming up in squads, four or five armed men in each squad, and Fletcher walked up, and him and Fletcher had a talk.

And he told Fletcher that he needed to get Rufus to turn himself in.

Fletcher told him that Rufus had went to Tennessee and should, it'd be the next day before he could get his hands on him.

And Fletcher told him that he was worried that all these armed men would harm his son, and Sheriff Rhea, he told him he would guarantee that he would protect him.

And he also told the armed men that, if they didn't bother Rufus, he could probably get him arrested, and that if they did try to harm he would probably let him go.

- He wants to find him first because he knows that, once one of those vigilante groups gets hold of him, then he has absolutely no chance And there will be no due process of law.

There will be no trial.

There will be nothing but a murder, but a lunching.

And the sheriff knows that.

But the sheriff also knows that, if he actively tries to stop them from doing this, then he too will be murdered.

He may not be lynched, in that it won't be a public spectacle, but he will absolutely be murdered, his bailiffs, his jail staff, they could all be murdered.

(slow music) - Fletcher eventually left.

And Tom Rhea left to go to the poor store from the creek.

As he got to the poor house, he got a call from the Cunningham house telling him to come back, that Fletcher was going to take him to get Rufus.

And he went back to the Cunningham house with Fletcher, and Fletcher took him back close to his house to get Rufus.

And they found Rufus in the sink hole.

And that's how they arrested him And they asked him one question, "Has anybody been here to help you?"

He told them, "My brother-in-law John Boyer has been here telling me what was going on about the house."

And that's very important when you look at what ended up happening later.

(slow music) (blues music) I tell people, it's kind of funny how I got involved.

I got to arguing with two preachers about this place.

We were over there, closer to KP under the tree, and we had a conversation and they told me my place was the cause of all the drug problems in this area.

And I explained to 'em that my place wasn't the cause of it.

It was those kids outside of the place and that I could not enforce or stop them from selling drugs because I wasn't an officer of the law.

I was a business owner in the community.

It wasn't right to try to force me to stop 'em when I didn't have that authority.

So, we got to arguing, and I told 'em I was gonna close up, and I locked it up and I went home, and dumb me, forgot that that's how I made my living.

And after that, I got kind of depressed and I went home and laid down.

I tell people and I laid down, I weighed 172 pounds, 180 pounds When I got back up, I weighed 280 pounds.

And this guy who actually ran this, he was the guy that I came to work here when I was a teenager, he came to the house one day.

He said, "They're trying to start a Black museum here.

And they want you to help 'em."

Because I'd have collected all this stuff about the neighborhood and stuff people had gave me a lot of stuff.

Plus, I love history, and I done a lot, you know, studied Black history.

I had wrote articles for the paper about Black history.

So, they says to me to be involved.

And he said, "Well, they said, they want you to help 'em.

And they're gonna have a meeting at the church across the street Thursday.

And I want you to go."

Well, this is probably a Monday, Tuesday.

So he came Thursday morning.

He said, "You know, they having that meeting this evening.

I want you to go."

I said, "Man, I don't wanna be bothered with that."

4:30 maybe that evening, four o'clock, he came to the house, and I was in bed.

He said, "Hey man, I told you they're having that meeting."

I said, "I don't feel," he said, "You get your ass up outta that damn bed.

I'm tired of this.

You've been in this bed for two years.

Get on up and get you a shower.

We going to this meeting."

So I got mad, but I got up, took a shower, went over to the meeting.

And they were talking about establishing this museum and were asking me these questions.

I got to answer 'em.

And that's how I got involved with the museum.

(blues music) Most of this stuff just fell into my lap.

I have never looked for it.

I was out fishing somewhere down in Muhlenberg County and we was on our way home, and one of my partners, we stopped at the mall.

He wanted to buy him some shoes or something.

And I always go in the bookstore when I'm in a mall.

So, I go in this bookstore.

I don't realize he came in the bookstore, but he see this book and he's looking at it and he's reading it and it's mentioning in Russellville and Logan County.

So he said, "Hey man, I'm gonna buy this book for your birthday."

I said, "Oh, that's cool."

So, I get the book.

On the way home, I'm reading it.

It's got the whole bio on Robert Young Thomas, who was the prosecutor in the Rufus Browder's case.

(blues music) Like I said, it just fell into my hand.

I always said, it was godsend, for some reason, but I always promised Miss Mattie Bell, and she said, "If I give you this Bible, you gotta promise me you'll tell this story."

And I said, "Yes, ma'am, I would."

Now again, I got to be honest, when I said, "Yes, ma'am, I would," I was not intending on telling no damn story.

It was just a promise that I gave her 'cause she gave me the Bible.

I never really had no idea how to tell her story, I guess, but you know, so that's the reason I always said it was God, it wasn't me.

(blues music) When they get to the jail, they call a doctor, Dr. Maddison Alderson and Dr. Alderson comes, and he checks Rufus' wound.

He cleans it off and everything.

And then he put a plaster of paris, which is the dressing he was put on a gunshot wound, on it.

He'd later testify that he wasn't shot.

Well, if he wasn't shot, why dress it for a wound?

He's put in jail.

This is about 6:00, 6:30.

Sheriff Rhea and Jailer Butts had already got together because they figured that a mob would come get him.

So, Jailer Butts sent his son, J to Sheriff Rhea to get some leg and handcuffs.

And he got the leg and handcuffs and they marched him behind the to the railroad track and up the railroad track to the colored cemetery.

The way it was supposed to go is that Sheriff Rhea and his deputies would meet Jailer Butts' son out there and take over Rufus, but the mob came and seized the town.

(slow music) (train engine humming) (slow music) In Tom Rhea's testimony, Tom Rhea tells the court that, the night of the murder of Cunningham John Jones came to town on a tra and told him he came to town on a train with four men who were coming to lynch Rufus.

(slow music) And Sheriff Rhea asked him who they were.

And he said he was scared to tell.

Now, note John Jones was on the square the night that the mob was here, but they didn't kill him that night.

They waited until he was arrested and killed him a week or two later.

(slow music) - There were whites and Blacks that talked about the lawlessness of the South needed to be controlled, needed to be stopped and so forth.

And so, they were calling upon states to take measures.

Okay.

And in some states, they then did enact certain things.

First of all, they came up with definitions of what constituted a lynching, a lynching different than a murder is that where someone is in the custody of the legal authorities, i.e, like let's say a person has been accused of rape or murder.

You've arrested them.

And you're taking him back to the jail and you are stopped.

And then he's taken away from you there.

Or he's broken outta jail, that would constitute a lynching.

Most often, a lynching was identified as involving more than one person, probably more than two people in the group that took the person and executed the person.

So, they came up with definitions of lynchings.

(slow music) - Lynching is both complicated and very simple.

The simple part is that lynching is designed to demonstrate publicly control.

It's designed to create control and to intimidate others in that group.

So in the case of 1908's lynching, the fact that four people who are not accused of a crime are lynched was designed to telegraph to Russellville's Black community that you need to know your place that your mutual aid society, the True Reformers, I mean, the True Reformers are actually mentioned several times during the case, that you should not belong to a group that supports one another.

The idea is to control Black citizens of Russellville.

It's to make sure they do not feel free to organize for their mutual benefit or aid.

And it's to make sure they understand that even doing something as simple as taking your sick wife to the doctor during the workday is not only not okay, but the bigger crime is to refuse a direct order from your white employer.

And it's something for which you or your supporters could pay for that with your life.

(slow music) - Well, they came in and they took over the town.

They stopped the train going north and searched it.

They went and took the jailer and the sheriff and made them go to the square because each one kept telling 'em that the other one had Rufus.

So, they made them go to the square to try to determine where Rufus was.

You know, back then, you didn't have, what?

Probably one town marshal and a sheriff and maybe one deputy.

So, three people against 50, 100 people, armed and masked, you know, it wasn't that they just took the time.

(slow music) - To be fair, there are instances in Kentucky and elsewhere of, when the person was in the custody of the legal authorities that there were some instances of sheriffs and others saying that they were not going to allow that person to be turned over to the mob.

So here in Kentucky, there are instances of where they stood up to the mob and fought them off.

There are instances of where white jailers were actually shot and killed and the mob overpowered them.

So, there are whites who also were opposed to some of the lynchings that took place.

- Well, they went to the jail and they asked them, was Rufus there?

And he told 'em no, that he turned him over to Sheriff Rhea.

They went and got Sheriff Rhea, and they said, "Where is Rufus?

We want him, we come to get him."

He said, "I left him with the jailer."

So eventually, they ended up taking the jailer and the sheriff to the square to make 'em confront each other.

And they still didn't get nothing out of 'em.

They threatened to hurt 'em and everything, but they ain't get nothing out of them.

And I've always said that I believe that Sheriff Rhea had promised to Fletcher that he would save his life.

And he was trying to keep that promise.

(insects buzzing) Spent the whole night at the cemetery, the mob ran around town.

They went to the Black sections of town and everywhere looking for Rufus They never found him.

(insects buzzing) (contemplative music) The next morning, about 7:30, eight o'clock, Deputy O'Connell put Rufus on the train and they shipped him to Bowling Green.

- Rufus Browder's story and the case in Russellville in 1908 is extraordinarily complicated.

And there aren't too many like it.

What's more normative is that a lynch mob forms, and they go rushing out to a jail, and they pull somebody out of the jail, and they lynch them, and it becomes a big public spectacle, but it happens fast.

Or you go to someone's house and you pull them out of their home and you lynch them, but it's more immediate.

So this, but what this shows you is that vigilantism can also be served cold.

It doesn't have to be served red hot.

It can be seen, in this case, he's murdered his white employer He claims self-defense.

But everything about white control in Russellville and white supremacy is on the line if Rufus Browder goes free.

So, from the perspective of the vigilantes who follow him, and he has to be moved from place to place, that shows how deeply serious this is in their view.

No matter what a jury says or does, he cannot be allowed to live because his continued existence is an act of resistance.

And they cannot allow that.

- The people here would not represent.

They made it clear we ain't representing him.

He needs to be, you know, killed He's wrong, he didn't have no business killing Cunningham.

But the first teacher in Olmstead was a guy named William L. Turner.

He was a pastor, and he was a teacher, but Turner was also big in the state Republican party.

So, Turner, as being big in the state Republican party, knew James C. Sims, who was probably one of Kentucky's most noted defense attorneys for that time, but who was also a Republican.

So, Turner recommended that Fletcher go see James C. Sims, and Fletcher went to see Sims and eventually hired him.

(slow music) - It would be very difficult for a Black person to get a lawyer if they were accused of shooting a white person at that time.

There is no right to counsel in 1908, anywhere in the United States.

So, people sometimes had to defend themselves, even on a capital murder charge, without counsel.

And that doesn't change until the 1930s, as far as capital crimes.

It doesn't become law for 50 states until 1963, in the case of Gideon versus Wainwright.

So, it's very possible that someone who had done something that created a great public outcry would not be able to find legal counsel in their area.

In fact, it's very surprising that this person who's accused of murder was able to get counsel, even from a neighboring city like Bowling Green.

(tense music) - In all Black communities, you had lodges.

After the Civil War, it was hard to bury Black people.

A lot of doctors in this area wouldn't give medical attention to Black people.

They wouldn't ensure Black people.

So, what happened was Blacks got together and created these lodges, these groups, where they would put their own money up.

And when somebody died, the money that everybody paid would have buried them.

(slow music) They were the social services for their day.

And the True Reformer lodge was a national lodge.

It had branches in just about every state in the United States, and that was the lodge they were a member of.

- The societies that were created, particularly in the 1880s and 1890s, first decade of the 20th century were created as Jim Crow began to become the rule of law in the South.

But it's also something that happens as many Black Americans move into the middle classes and they have some resources.

So, they create societies like the True Reformers.

And the idea is that the community needs to take care of itself and that those in the community who have the means to do it, this new Black middle class, can do it.

So, the True Reformers are a great example of this.

We take care of ourselves and we take care of our own, but that's also very frightening in a world in which many white lawmakers and white Southerners are trying to create a separate and unequal world.

They're passing Jim Crow laws at the state legislative level.

They are moving to erase the gains that Black Americans had made after the Civil War and during reconstruction and creating a racial caste system.

So, mutual aid becomes even more important after that because Black southerners who have the means to help others do so.

- You heard the phrase like "Home rule of the South," the Democrats and whites can have home rule of the South as far as in racial concerns and will leave states to make up their own laws on how to do education or voting districts or qualifications for voters.

With the advent of things like vagrancy laws, poll taxes, grandfather clauses, segregations, and accommodations and schools, separate but equal, the goal of Black subjugation and white supremacy, by 1908, in each state, had been started to set the foundation for the 20th century to continue, at least in their view, in perpetuity.

The larger idea of Black organizing and these social movement organizations, whether it's a church or a fraternal lodge, they become targets.

Any of those organizing bodies, in a way, upsetting the racial order could get the reaction of white violence.

- The lodge actually passed a, they passed two resolutions, one they said that Rufus had killed Cunningham in self defense, and two, they wanted to raise money to help pay for the lawyer.

And from what I was understanding is that they would arrested John and Virgil Jones at a lodge meeting.

(slow music) They were arrested for threatening Lawson, number one, and I wanna say hindering the peace or something.

I never did understand what that was.

My guess is is that somebody in the Black community tipped the quote unquote, "Leaders and the officers" about this meeting and the leaders and the officers called the sheriff.

And then eventually, they came in, and for lack of a better word, raided the meeting.

(slow music) And Joe Riley, he was down here getting drunk at a, what do they call 'em?

A blind tiger, that's what they used to call the bootlegger joints back then.

And he had come out of one of the joints and shot a pistol in the air.

And Sheriff Rhea then came and arrested him.

And from my understanding is that, when they arrested him, he had put the pistol up, so they could not arrest him for shooting a pistol.

They arrested him for carrying a concealed deadly weapon.

And that's how all of 'em ended up in jail.

Well, Boyer was his brother-in-law.

Riley had nothing to do with it.

And John and Virgil Jones were both lodge members of his.

(contemplative music) (slow music) Judge Sandidge and John Rhodes and James C. Sims had all known each other because I wanna say Sims and Rhodes both was down here on the Guy Lyons case, which was a rape case a few years before that.

So, they knew each other, and Sims had sent John Rhodes down here to try to get information and work on the case.

And John had went to the courthouse and Judge Sandidge had left word for him to meet him at the bank.

And when he got to the bank, he told Rhodes, he said, you know, John, he said, "You and James have a thriving and booming practice here in Logan County."

He said, "And this Browders thing can cause a lot of problems."

He said, "Why don't y'all let me appoint him an attorney that will make sure that the forms of laws are followed?

Everybody knows he's guilty.

And because of that, he'll be given a fair trial and things will be done that should happen," or something like that.

And John Rhodes told him, said, "Well, judge, I can't make that decision because I'm a junior partner in the firm."

He said, "Would you allow me to use your phone and call my partner?"

And he called James C. Sims in Bowling Green.

And Judge Sims said to John Rhodes, he said, "John, does our shingle still hang out?"

And it took me two years to figure out what the hell he was talking about.

But in those days, if you were a lawyer, you had a piece of wood or something that hung out in front of your building, denoting that you were attorney, and that you would represent people, and John Rhodes answered him and said, "Yes, it does."

He said, "Well, this boy's father has paid us and we're gonna give him the best representation possible."

And they did.

They really did.

Rhodes got back on the train and went back to Bowling Green.

And the next morning, it was in all the newspapers about the lynching.

(chiming music) I decided to do it in 2008, the hundredth year anniversary of the lynching.

It was so funny.

Well, when I said that thing at that board meeting, you could have heard a rat piss on cotton.

They wanted no parts of that (laughs).

But they didn't want to tell me no.

So what they done, they said, "You can do it, but we don't have the money to pay for it."

And I went to one of the guys who got lynched's grandson.

I said, "If you put up some money, I'll put up some money."

We eventually got together, and eventually historic Russellville got it together, and they put up a better exhibit but they didn't want to do it at first, and I got a lot of flack from people in the neighborhood.

Matter of fact, the guy who I started working for right here, he gave me hell about it, and that shocked me, 'cause he was usually what you call progressive, I guess, or radical, but it shocked him.

One of my coaches I went to school with, he gave me, "You need to be doing positive stuff and telling about the teachers and the good things our people done."

And I asked him, I said, "Well, coach," I said, "What if I tell the truth?

Can't I do that?

And ain't the truth good?"

And a lot of people just didn't want to talk about it.

For some reason, Americans are very uncomfortable with that.

And they back up from it.

They don't want to discuss it, but as a topic, and as a nation, we will not heal until we start talking about it.

We've got to start talking about it.

It's very important to us healing and it's very important to us coming together.

(chiming music) (slow music) Because the mob didn't come and get John and Virgil Jones immediately, in my mind, the people that they guard there, they waited a week or so.

And at night, people start coming into town, and eventually, a mob formed and went to the jail.

They knocked on the jail door and the jailer answered the door and he was covered with rifles and pistols.

And they asked him, "We come to get those Jones boys," or something like that.

And when they went in, if you ever been in our jail, it's got this big metal jail, so they couldn't break the door down.

So they had to get the keys from the jailer.

And he gave 'em the keys.

And the first thing they asked him, they said, "Were they armed?"

And my guess is he thought maybe the jailer'd seen them coming and had armed the prisoners to protect themselves.

And if they'd been armed, they probably wouldn't have went in there, but he told them no.

So they went in and they were actually just looking for three people.

They were looking for John Boyer who had been informing Rufus what was going on, John and Virgil Jones, who were member of the True Reformers.

So, they go in and they grab him And they, legend has always said, is that they said is, "Hey, there's an extra one in here."

They said, "Well, who is it?"

They said, "I don't know," said "He's at the wrong damn place at the wrong damn time."

And they brought him on out.

They said they tied their hands behind their backs and marched them down the street past the mayor's house.

And then went on out to Armstrong.

There was a Black man in the woods that I've never been able to identify.

They don't even make reference to him in the newspapers, but he was back in the woods and he witnessed it all.

And when they got 'em out there, they said they lynched one and made everybody else look.

Then they lynched the next one and made the other two look.

Then they lynched the third one and made the last man look.

And the last man was to be Virgil Jones.

And they said Virgil broke away and started fighting.

Eventually, a guy was supposed to hit him in the head with a rifle and knocked him down.

And they were supposed to throw the rope around his neck, drug him back up to where they lynched the other guys and put him on this tree.

The amazing thing was they put a typed written note around his neck that said, "Let this be a warning to you niggers to let white folk alone or you'll go the same damn way.

Your lodges and your halls better shut up and quit."

(slow music) (contemplative music) - You can see the thread from the slavery days is that the scholars who looked at slavery and violence and then looked at violence later on said, "Violence is a white method of control," that it's very much done to make sure that all Black people understand their place.

Now I said, "All Black people," it is true that in America, in Kentucky, elsewhere, not every, there were people other than Blacks who were lynched.

There were people who were Native Americans lynched in some places, depending on if they had a population there.

There were Mexican Americans.

There were immigrants coming to America.

And of course, there were white Americans who were lynched, but the greatest proportion of people lynched, far exceeding their numbers in the population anywhere, were Blacks.

And that's why you could still say it was a method of control for them.

And the lynching of one Black person, just like the killing of a slave back during the slavery period, would be a warning to all others that this is what could happen to you for somehow getting outta your place, defining whites, of course, attacking whites, if someone said you had gotten into an altercation or murdered someone.

So, lynchings is a form of racial control.

And that's why it occurred in Kentucky and elsewhere.

(contemplative music) - You know, my grandmother was eight years old when all this happened.

She lived right there, town and grove, Cedar Grove Church was right here.

She lived right beside the church.

Cunningham and the Browdens lived right around the corner.

Man, she did not go for that.

She was, she didn't wanna mess with them white people.

Not only her, most people here.

You know?

You didn't challenge anything, because to challenge, you would be considered a troublemaker.

And that's the last thing you want to be considered a troublemaker.

If you were the maid, you couldn't get work.

If you was a farmer, you couldn't get to work.

You know?

It intimidated not only her generation, but four or five generations after that.

It was passed on.

It was a fear that was passed on (chiming music) That morning, David B. Estes, who was a Confederate veteran, was said to have been taking his cows off to pasture, out to pasture, and discovered the bodies.

And he got in touch with the officials.

And eventually, people started coming from everywhere to view 'em on the tree.

About probably eight or nine o'clock that morning, judge was ordered the bodies cut down.

They were taken in front of the Logan County Courthouse and laid out and a coroner's inquest was held over the bodies.

The coroner said that they died by parties unknown.

(contemplative music) - It's tied to this idea that vigilantism is an act of terrible violence, but it's also construed as an act of popular will, bringing popular will to life.

And there's a term, popular constitutionalism, that we see, where people believe very sincerely that they have a responsibility to act if they don't think the legal system is going to act.

And frequently, what's interesting about lynching is that sometimes these mobs act before the legal system has an opportunity to do anything with the case.

They want to make sure that what they construct as justice is done.

And it is about terrorizing the Black population or whatever group they want to other.

And they want to show that they need to stay in their lane and they need to maintain control.

There are examples of Jewish people, for example, in Atlanta, who are lynched at the height of antisemitic activity in Atlanta.

So, it's the same thing.

You other someone, and then a mob will come in and take them out and lynch them and do it publicly and do it in a way where they not only take responsibility, but they document it and they send the cards to their friends and they make it very clear that if you don't do exactly what we say and how we say to do it, then this will happen to you.

- That note that is attached to them that says, "This is what happens to these folk when they mess with white people," means they don't, nothing is going to change the status quo.

So, that's why I think those young men were lynched.

- The other thing that we know about lynching is that it's also one of the most photographed crimes.

I mean, normally you don't photograph a crime.

Do you?

You don't want a record.

People don't wanna get caught.

But the fact that an extra judicial lynch mob will take pictures, they will have postcards made.

They will send them to family members and friends as if this was a vacation.

They wanna document what they've done.

And it lets people know that this is what will happen if you get out of line.

And it will also let other white people know that this is what I've done in order to control people that need to be controlled.

(slow music) - I was at home asleep the other and my brother let this young girl back in and she hit me on the head.

(hand smacking) I said, "What the hell is this?"

And I woke up.

She said, "Are you Mr.

Morrow?"

I said, "Yeah."

She said, "I want to see that lynching exhibit."

I said, "You want to see the lynch?"

I'm 2:30, sleeping.

I said, "Who the hell is this?"

Couldn't have been no more than 18, 17 years old.

She said, "I seen something online and it bothered me and I just want to come see it.

I just come down here to see it.

Would you mind letting me look at it?"

I said, "Well, let me get my shoes and stuff on, get a coat and I'll be over."

But I got over and she was sitting on the step.

So, I opened the door and she said, "Can I sit here and just read this stuff?"

I said, "Yeah, I'll sit here with you."

Well, to me, that was just as important as somebody famous coming, because you had a young kid striving and looking for knowledge.

When she got ready to leave, she said, "Mr. Morrow," she said, "I'm trying to get a better understanding of my people."

She said, "I hope this'll help me."

I said "It might."

So I get outside and I locked the door.

I said, "Let me ask you something."

I said, "How old are you?"

She said, "I'm 18."

I said, "Do you like history?"

She said, "Yeah."

I said, "I tell you what."

I said, "I'm gonna give you a card."

I said, "Why don't you come volunteer and help me a couple of days a week?"

I said, "We got so much stuff and you can learn so much more."

She said, "I'd love that."

Well, to me, that was important.

This was somebody you didn't have to make do anything.

She came on her own.

So, if we can do that a little more, I think, to me, those are the important things is that, when you get these people thriving and wanting this, wanting this knowledge, not only about the lynching, but about Donegan and about the schools and about the bills, the way you change a nation is you change, not their minds, you change their heart.

And I think people's hearts are changing a little bit.

(slow music) The next thing that come was the trial for Rufus.

(tense music) Rufus would go through three trials.

The first trial I want to say was maybe September, 1908.

And the first trial was a hung jury.

But how it was, the one who hung the jury up, one of them was run out of town they say.

The next trial was probably October, November, a little later.

And he was given the death penalty.

(tense music) - So in a real sense, it looks as if Kentucky is abiding by the law, but I would say, but the whole premise of having a trial for Rufus Browder is not consistent with what would've happened if Rufus Browder had been a white man, a white share cropper involved in that, that it would have, by the time the grand jury looked at that, the grand jury would've come back and said, that's justifiable homicide.

Or let's say, if there had in fact been a trial, it's hard to conceive of a white man in the same situation as Rufus Browder being sentenced to death in that kind of situation.

It is, it's just doesn't, the Kentucky records don't bear out white people being put to death like he was sentenced to death.

- His lawyers, Judge Sims and John Rhodes filed a special appeal to a state court of appeals asking them to meet in special session to save his life.

They came back and met in special session and they granted Rufus a change of venue and sent the case to Simpson County.

But they also said one more thing, that they wanted him x-rayed.

(slow music) - The convoluted set of circumstances that lead to Rufus Browder not being x-rayed is a good example of how many white people in the justice system are not gonna put themselves out there for a Black defendant.

And, you know, there are a lot of reasons they might make that decision.

They fear retaliation or they desire to maintain control, like the vigilantes desire to maintain control.

And as a historian, I'd have to know more about the circumstances.

Sometimes that's not knowable.

I mean, some people are not public enough or they don't leave us enough clues that we can really understand what their intent was.

But historian's best guess here is that it's about maintaining racial control or someone who is afraid of risking their own position by helping a Black defendant who has shot a white man.

So again, what is the motivation to put yourself out there on the line?

Not everybody's going to do it.

(slow music) - The next trial I want to say was in 1909 in Simpson County.

And at that trial, Rufus was given life in prison.

His lawyers, John Rhodes, and J.C. Sims, felt that the best thing to do was let the verdict stand and appeal to Governor Willson to issue a pardon.

And they felt the best way to do that was to do it when Willson was getting it to come outta office and they felt they had to do it then because Willson understood the circumstances better than any other governor would.

(tense music) - One could say it was unusual.

And I think the fact that those four young men had been lynched led to so much attention being focused on it, led to him having a trial and then another trial, and then yet another one.

But, and so on that regard, it was in fact different there.

But again, the outcome of it was consistent with what had always occurred in that regard.

What would have been remarkable would have been for him to have been found not guilty and let go.

A jury could not, did not do that.

(tense music) - He reviewed everything, and he eventually didn't give him a pardon, but he commuted his sentence to 10 years with good time served.

So, Rufus was supposed to get outta jail.

And what I was told is that he was supposed to get out.

His father heard he was getting out and they went to the train station to meet him.

(train engine rumbling) And when they got to the train station, they went to look for the Jim Crow car.

They went to there first.

And they said, "What are you talking about?

The Jim Crow car?"

Well, at that time Kentucky had segregated railroad cars.

They had one car just for Blacks So, when they found that Rufus wasn't on the Jim Crow car, there's a conductor.

They said, "Hey, we're looking for Rufus Browder.

He just got out prison at Lyon County, and he's supposed to be on this train."

And the conductor said, "Well, I got him here, by God."

And they took 'em back to a box car and they opened the door and it was a pine box that Rufus was in the pine box.

(slow music) His death certificate said that he died of tuberculosis, but nobody in the family never heard of it.

They assumed that he was coming home alive, but when he got home, he was dead.

He was buried out to the Cedar Grove Church.

That's the Rufus Browder story, I guess.

(slow music) That's it.

(chiming music) I would probably like them to understand that the way America's race has come together is a dichotomy of stories, that it's just not one story, that you can't take no one fixed story about slavery, or no one fixed story about lynching, and no one fixed story about segregation, and make it all the stories, that you have to take these stories one at a time.

And each one is unique to my people and that's probably what I would do.

I hope they thrive, I hope we get more people in.

I hope they help educate the community and the state and the nation.

And I also hope I find some young people to take my place (laughs) because I'm getting old and it's important that it keeps on.

And the only way anything can survive is that you bring young blood into it.

Yeah.

- By the 1920s, okay?

Then you say 1930s, 1940s, going forward.

The number of lynchings decline.

Okay?

I say in my book on racial violence that the state takes the place of the lynch mob, that in many instances, so many Black people are put to death after a sham trial that they have that Kentucky itself acknowledges it and says that there must be a 30 day period from when a person is found guilty and when he is executed.

Why did they do that?

Because in so many instances, they had a trial in the morning and executed the person at noon, the very same time period.

They then said, "We have to wait 30 days," but you then go back and you say, where they, the judge said "We waived it.

Because of the hostility of the mob, we went ahead and waived it and executed them anyway."

And you then say, "But no, that's the reason you couldn't execute.

And you needed for things to calm down."

Even though the number of lynchings ultimately declines, I ask the question, "When did legal lynchings end in the State of Kentucky?"

So, there were pressures put on in the 1920s, but legal lynchings replace these other lynchings that had occurred.

(contemplative music) - This is like going to the state fair.

When you go to the state fair, you get your photos taken and everything.

This was the same thing.

You know, people miss this, and people don't like to talk about this, but this is the fact you had people that would bring picnic baskets to watch people be murdered, burned at the stake, then after it was over, they would go cut pieces off and take 'em home.

Now, how sadistic is this?

If you got any humanity in you, this thing is gonna make you mad But at the same time, you will learn what should not happen to anybody, regardless if they Black or white or rich or poor or gay, or Catholic or Jew.

If we are going to argue to the world that we're such a great nation, we've got to live up to that promise.

And one part of living up to that promise is that everybody will be treated justly in the eyes of the law, that everybody will be given a fair day in court, that you won't be snatched out of the law's hands and put on the tree, that you won't be gunned down in the law's hands for what you allegedly done, not what was proven, but what you allegedly done.

And if you believe in the nation you have to stand up for that for everybody.

So, I guess that's just how I see it though.

But you know, if you believe, you have to stand up for everybody, and by standing up for the people that you dislike and hate or disagree with, you actually stand up for everybody.

And that's hard (laughs).

That's really hard.

You know?

I don't agree with Klan men, but I don't think you should lynch 'em, and I would stand up to fight against lynching them.

I think, if they done something wrong, they oughta have a chance to go through the law and the courts and the jury shouldn't be stacked.

And we'd hope the judge wouldn't be biased.

We'd hope they'd get a fair chance because that's what our nation has sold for 200 years.

That's what so many of us have bought.

And how does it crush you when you find out what they sold you and put in your grocery bag was supposed to be one thing, but when you got home and started to cook, it was another?

(blues music) ♪ Death don't have no mercy in this land ♪ ♪ Death don't have no mercy in this land ♪ ♪ He'll come to your house and he won't stay long ♪ ♪ You'll look in the bed and somebody will be gone ♪ ♪ Death don't have no mercy in this land ♪ ♪ And Death will go in any family in this land ♪ ♪ And Death will go in every family in this land ♪ ♪ Well, he'll come to your house and he won't stay long ♪ ♪ Well, you'll look in the bed ♪ And one of your family will be gone ♪ ♪ Death will go in any family in this land ♪ ♪ Well, he never takes a vacation in this land ♪ ♪ Well, Death never take a vacation in this land ♪ ♪ Well, he'll come to your house and he won't stay long ♪ ♪ You'll look in the bed and your mother will be gone ♪ ♪ Death never takes a vacation in this land ♪ ♪ Talk ♪ Pray God ♪ Yeah ♪ Well, he'll leave you standing ♪ and crying in this land ♪ Well, Death'll leave you ♪ standing and crying in this land ♪ ♪ Well, he'll come to your house and he won't stay long ♪ ♪ You'll look in the bed and somebody will be gone ♪ ♪ Death will leave you standing crying in this land ♪ ♪ Oh, Death's always in a hurry in this land ♪ ♪ Oh, Death's always in a hurry in this land ♪ ♪ Well, he'll come to your house and he won't stay long ♪ ♪ You'll look at your bed and you mother will be gone ♪ ♪ Death's always in a hurry in this land ♪ ♪ Well, he won't give you time to get ready in this land ♪ ♪ Well, he won't give you time to get ready in this land ♪ ♪ Well, he'll come to your house and he won't stay long ♪ ♪ Well, you'll look in the bed and somebody will be gone ♪ ♪ Death won't give you time to get ready in this land ♪