Tuesday, June 10, 2014

June 10, 1894: James Perry

This one is a little different.  I have found three newspaper accounts and I will put in all of them since they are all short.  I'll start with the April 30, 1899 Santa Cruz Sentinel (Santa Cruz, California.)  This is just a small bit in the middle of a column titled "Awful Record of Lynchings."


June 10, 1898 at Knoxville, Ark., James Perry was shut up in a cabin because he had smallpox and was burned to death.



This is from the Freeborn County Standard (Albert Lea, Minnesota) dated June 20, 1894.  This is in the middle of a column titled "West and South."


UNKNOWN persons killed James Perry, a Virginia negro who introduced smallpox into Knoxville, Tenn.


And finally, this article from tThe Daily Democrat (Huntington, Indiana) June 12, 1894.


Killed for Carrying the Plague.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn., June 12.--James Perry, a Virginia negro who introduced smallpox into Knoxville last winter, was killed by unknown persons near the police headquarters. 


The first one had the date 1898, but all the ones before it were dated 1893.  Personally, I believe it was a typo, since the other papers were from 1894.  It also states Knoxville, Arkansas instead of Knoxville, Tennessee.  I assume that, too, is a typo.  It is sad to think that a man being lynched for having a disease had so little notice than a sentence in each of the three papers.

5 comments:

  1. The same little clip also showed up in Alexandria, under the caption "Telegraphic Brevities": “James Perry, a Virginia negro, who introduced smallpox into Knoxville last winter, was killed by unknown persons near police headquarters there yesterday.”
    Alexandria gazette. (Alexandria, D.C.), 11 June 1894. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.

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  2. (I hit "publish" too quickly.) Also the Orleans County monitor (Barton, Vt.), 18 June 1894. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. and The Pioneer express. (Pembina, Dakota [N.D.]), 29 June 1894. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. . And there's an earlier report when he first showed up with the smallpox in The Greenville times. (Greenville, Miss.), 17 Feb. 1894. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. . (Chronicling America at the Library of Congress is a great resource.)

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  3. Thanks for letting me know. I appreciate the information. I am better at finding articles now than when I posted this. I had only been writing the blog for 10 days. I will definitely have to check out the LoC.

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  4. Please let me know if you have any additional information on James Perry. I am working with others to honor him with the help of the Equal Justice Initiative. They will have an historical marker available in 2018 and I would like to know more about Mr. Perry. Claudia Melear, aka Birdteacher

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