August 8, 1899: Echo Brown

Today we learn about a lynching in Louisiana through the pages of The Inter Ocean (Chicago, Illinois) dated August 10, 1899:

KILLED BY ARMED MOB.

Negroes Shot and Flogged by Whites in Louisiana.

Special Dispatch to The Inter Ocean.

NEW ORLEANS, La., Aug. 9.—After several months of quiet, lawlessness has again broken out in Tangipahoa parish in which there have been more murders and assassinations than in all the rest of the state combined. A special from Amite City, the parish seat, says:

"Adolphus, alias Echo Brown, colored, was shot and killed last night, and Edgar and Edward Barr severely flogged by a gang of armed men. Just as the clock struck 12 a body of some twenty-five or thirty armed and masked men rode quietly up to the house of Louis Brown, colored, on the edge of the town. Ten of the mob, armed with shotguns and pistols, entered the house and found Echo Brown and Edgar Barr in bed. They told them to get up, and throwing sacks over their heads dragged them out. As soon as they got out into the road Echo made a futile break for liberty, but had only gone a little way when several guns were leveled at him and their contents poured into his back, with fatal result. After killing Brown the mob went over to the Barr house and got Edward Barr and took him and Edgar about a quarter mile from town, where they were severely flogged. Their work finished they mounted their horses and rode off. An inquest was held this morning on the body of Echo Brown. A jury was impaneled and the usual verdict in cases of this kind returned.

News from Kentwood in the same parish states that, about 12 o'clock last night twenty or thirty pistol shots were heard in the direction of Amos Kent Lumber and Brick company's plant, one of the largest saw mills in the South. This morning it was learned that a party of white men had done the shooting at the negro settlement immediately adjoining the mill property for the purpose of intimidating the negroes. Several notices were found posted about the work advising the management that negroes could not work at the saw mill, on the dummy train, nor at the planing mill, but very generously permitting them to continue the negroes in their brick yard work without molestation. As there has never been any trouble at this plant in regard to the working of negroes it was somewhat of a surprise. There are many employes [sic] at the plant, both white and blacks, that have worked there continuously for more than twenty years.

Thank you for joining me and as always, I hope I leave you with something to ponder.