The Black Russian (5 page)

Dickerson’s plans had been thwarted for the second time by the unlikely coalition of a black couple and the local white judicial system. He immediately decided to reappeal to the Mississippi supreme court. The stakes had now risen for the Thomases, and fighting
Dickerson
had become more difficult, but they were not about to give up. During most of this time, they did not have possession of their farm or receive income from it, and they could not have had much cash on hand. Consequently, two days after Dickerson announced his intention to reappeal, the Thomases deeded one-half of their farm to their lead lawyer, Jack Cutrer, as a retainer and gave him a lien on the remainder in case he incurred any other expenses. Because they badly needed some money just to get by, the deed also stipulated that Cutrer would give them ten dollars in cash when they signed.

William Dickerson and his family were unlikely to have been the only whites in the county who saw the Thomases as
troublemakers
needing to be taught a lesson. By the late 1880s, Mississippi was becoming the “lynchingest” state in the entire country. This would have been a prudent time for the Thomases to leave. In fact, they appear to have abandoned Coahoma County and moved to Memphis
during the summer of 1890, after they deeded their farm to Cutrer. This was the nearest city to Friars Point and was located only some seventy miles away, which meant that it was far enough to establish a safe distance from possible threats but close enough to allow them to keep an eye on the lawsuit’s progress.

By 1890, Memphis had a population of some sixty thousand, with 56 percent white and 44 percent black, and was a major business hub. It was the largest inland cotton market in the United States and shipped 770,000 bales a year to fabric mills at home and abroad, especially to England. River transport on the Mississippi and railroads linking the rest of the country with the South further enhanced the city’s economic importance and made it an attractive place to seek work.

Although Memphis became a temporary haven for the
Thomases
, it was hardly a model of racial tolerance. In 1866, the city had seen one of the worst race riots in the South following the Civil War; and in the 1880s lynchings began to increase. But Memphis was also big enough to allow a new black family to blend in without trouble.

Lewis and India rented a house at 112 Kansas Avenue, at the corner of Carolina Avenue, in the Fort Pickering section on the city’s southern edge. In those days, this was a suburban and mostly black part of town. The house was a roomy, long and narrow, two-story frame structure with a yard on two sides and a stable in the back, in the middle of what might be called today a mixed residential and industrial zone. It was a busy, noisy, smelly, and gritty place. A wood yard was directly across the street, and the Milburn Gin and Machine Company, which occupied an entire city block and included various manufacturing shops and storage areas, was diagonally across. The depot for the Kansas City, Memphis and Birmingham Railroad lay one block to the west. Tracks from one of its branches passed right in front of the Thomases’ house and forked several doors away; another set of three tracks ran directly behind the stable in their backyard. The
screech of steel wheels and the howls of steam whistles as trains went back and forth on all sides, the billows of acrid black coal smoke, and the dust that settled everywhere must have been a shock at first for country youngsters like Frederick and Ophelia, who were used to the lush green vistas, placid bayous, and sweet-smelling breezes of Coahoma County.

But the city offered tantalizing opportunities that were not
available
back home. Lewis needed to find work and was able to get a job as a flagman with the KCM&B Railroad. Because the house that he and India rented was too big for just their family, they decided to use part of it as a boardinghouse for India to run. She not only was a good cook but may already have had experience with lodgers in a boardinghouse in Clarksdale.

Frederick got a job as a delivery boy for Joseph A. Weir, a white merchant who owned a well-known market on Beale Street that advertised “Fine Meats, Oysters, Fish, and Game.” This is the first urban job that Frederick had about which there is any information, and it is intriguing to note how it foreshadows his occupations in future years and in distant locations, which always involved some form of service and sophisticated cuisine.

Frederick also tried to continue his formal education in
Memphis
. He enrolled “for a short time” in Howe Institute, a school for black youth. Established in 1888 as the Baptist Bible and Normal Institute, it was renamed the following year in honor of Peter Howe, its white founder and chief benefactor. When Frederick was a student at Howe, the principal was most likely Joseph Eastbrook, a
Congregational
minister and lifelong educator originally from Michigan, and one of the teachers was Eastbrook’s wife, Ida Ann, who had been born in New York. Contacts with tolerant and enlightened white people like these from the North were probably Frederick’s first, and would have given him an entirely new sense of how whites could treat blacks. Howe Institute tried to meet a patchwork quilt of different educational needs. It provided everything from religious instruction
to academic subjects to vocational training in such skills as sewing and nursing for girls and carpentry for boys. A local newspaper pointed out that a “specialty” of the Howe Institute was “furnishing trained houseboys for the people of Memphis—sending into this service as many as 100 a year.” Because Frederick would work for many years as a servant, although at a considerably more sophisticated level than a newspaper reporter in Memphis could have imagined, it is possible that he received some training in the relevant skills and deportment while at Howe. His careful, calligraphic handwriting later in life suggests the influence of formal schooling as well.

Frederick’s stay at Howe and in Memphis would prove short,
unfortunately
. Two new tragedies were waiting that would strike his family unexpectedly and would finally destroy everything his parents had achieved.

Among the boarders at Lewis and India’s house was a black married couple, Frank Shelton and his wife. According to Memphis newspapers from October 1890, which strove to outdo themselves in describing Shelton in the most lurid terms, he was a “trifling” and “worthless negro” with an “evil disposition,” “a reputation for
brutality
,” and “brutal instincts.” Even his wife was quoted as describing him as “very cruel, stubborn and desperate.” Shelton was about thirty years old; had a smooth, dark brown complexion, a big nose, and a thick chest; was five feet ten inches tall; and carried a scar on the back of his head, which his wife said he had gotten in a fight with his employer at a sawmill in Alabama. He was a brakeman on a railroad and had come to Memphis about five months earlier.

By contrast, all the newspapers described Lewis in very positive terms. He was a “very reputable colored citizen,” an “industrious,” “intelligent,” and “conscientious” man who was never known to
participate
in the fights and barroom brawls that often spilled out onto the streets of Fort Pickering. He and his wife were able to rent their
house through their “industry and economy” and lived “comfortably” on their earnings. In 1890, Lewis was in his mid-fifties and India in her late forties. Expressing the norms of the time, the newspapers described her as “aged” and him as an “inoffensive old negro.”

On Friday, October 24, for some unknown reason Frank Shelton refused to pay his rent and had an argument with Lewis, who told the Sheltons that they would have to leave their room. They were gone only overnight, however, and after they made amends Lewis allowed them to return. The calm did not last. The following
evening
, Shelton got into an argument with his wife and assaulted her brutally. He knocked her down, dragged her out of the house, and stamped her face with his feet. According to one account, Shelton also beat her with a spade so badly that her face and head were “horribly disfigured and bruised.” Lewis saw the attack from a distance and hurried over, pleading with Shelton to stop. When he realized that this was not doing any good, he went to call a policeman. Shelton saw what Lewis was doing and, fearing arrest, stopped his assault. But before running away, he yelled a chilling threat to Lewis: “I will get even with you for this, if it takes me ten years! You are my meat!”

The next morning, Sunday, October 26, at about nine o’clock, Shelton’s wife went to the police herself and asked them to arrest her husband for the beating he had given her. An Officer Richardson was dispatched to deal with the matter. He approached the Thomases’ boardinghouse, planning to watch it from a distance in the hope of catching Shelton if he should return. Eventually, Richardson caught sight of him and rushed forward, shouting to him that he was under arrest. When Shelton started to run, Richardson drew his revolver and fired, but the shot went wide. Shelton turned a corner and disappeared.

The following night, Monday, October 27, Lewis went to bed as usual. Around 3 a.m., Shelton got into the Thomases’ house, crept up the stairs to Lewis and India’s room on the second floor, and entered it quietly. He was carrying a sharp-bladed ax and must have paused by the side of the double bed until he could make out his target in
the dim light. Lewis was asleep, faceup, lying next to India. Shelton raised the ax, took aim, and brought it down hard on Lewis’s face. The sound of the heavy blow roused India. She propped herself up on her elbows and glimpsed her husband struggling to rise with his arm outstretched; then the steel flashed and another heavy blow descended upon Lewis. India screamed in terror. Shelton dropped the ax, dashed out of the room, and ran down the stairs.

India’s screams roused the household. Frederick, Ophelia,
Shelton’s
wife, and the other tenants rushed into the room. After several moments of panic, someone got a light, which illuminated a horrific scene. Lewis was writhing in agony on the bed, blood pouring in streams from a gaping wound that extended from his left temple to his mouth. The first blow had cut through his cheekbone and
fractured
his skull. The second blow had caught his arm above the elbow when he raised it in a futile attempt to protect himself and had cut through the muscle and bone, almost severing it. Lewis struggled to rise several times as blood poured onto the bed and pooled on the floor near the ax that Shelton had dropped. It took several more frantic moments before someone had gathered sufficient wits to telephone for a doctor and the police. The blow to Lewis’s face had nearly killed him. The doctor who arrived could do nothing to help because of the depth of the wound and the amount of blood that Lewis had lost. Somehow, Lewis lingered for six more hours, unconscious, until he finally died at 9 a.m.

Two justices arrived to carry out an autopsy and conduct an investigation. Testimony by all the witnesses pointed conclusively to Shelton. The Memphis police department quickly spread the news that he was the prime suspect. A day later, he was spotted sneaking onto a train heading for Holly Springs, a town in Mississippi some thirty miles southeast of Memphis. When he tried to escape the guards who were waiting for him, they killed him in a fusillade of shots. On the following day, in a display of professional zeal that was also strikingly insensitive to India’s trauma, the Memphis police sent
her down on the afternoon train to identify her husband’s murderer. There was no doubt, and the case was closed.

Back in Coahoma County, the news of what had happened to Lewis could hardly have displeased William Dickerson. This black man had caused him a lot of trouble over the years and his death must have seemed like a just reward or even a wish fulfilled. There is no suggestion, however, that Dickerson was somehow behind Lewis’s murder. It was merely bad luck, and the price that Lewis paid for his decency when he decided to help a woman with an abusive husband.

Shortly thereafter, Dickerson got more news that must have cheered him. In October 1890 the Mississippi supreme court issued an explanation of its previous decision. It now stated that the chancery court should never have returned the disputed land to Lewis before recalculation of the debt between him and Dickerson was completed.

But any illusions Dickerson might have had about Lewis’s death putting an end to the lawsuit were quickly dispelled. On December 24, 1890, barely two months after the murder, India
petitioned
the chancery court to be recognized as the executor of her deceased husband’s estate. As part of the process, she had to take an oath at the courthouse in Friars Point. Her willingness to come back to a town where she would face serious hostility from some quarters proves she was a remarkably determined woman and could not be cowed easily. On January 10, 1891, she revived the lawsuit against Dickerson in her own name and in the name of her two children, Frederick and Ophelia.

The case would continue with long interruptions and various convolutions for nearly four more years. It outlived both of the original litigants: William Dickerson died on February 18, 1894, at the relatively young age of thirty-nine; his widow, Lula, stepped into the breach to continue the fight, just as India had done. In the end, the decision the Coahoma County Chancery Court handed down on November 28,
1894, stated that India owed Lula a much-reduced amount of money. India had to auction off land to raise it, and a year later she was still remortgaging the property to raise money quickly for other reasons, possibly for Frederick.

Through all this time, India continued the case in her and the children’s names, despite the fact that her family had effectively fallen apart and its living connection with the farm in Coahoma was severed. She stayed on in Memphis for a year after the murder, although in a different house from the one she had shared with Lewis, and in 1892 she moved to Louisville, Kentucky, presumably with Ophelia, where she got a job as a cook for a prosperous white jeweler. She worked for him for several years and appears to have died in Louisville sometime in the mid-1890s. The fate of Ophelia is unknown.