Eli Hilson, Jr.: A Family Civil Rights Martyr - Part One

Hello Family,

Reflecting on recent events regarding political and racial unrest, I decided to start 2021 off with a series that hits very close to our own home.  January blog posts will feature Eli Hilson, Jr. the brother of Laura Matilda Hilson Harris (paternal grandfather Jacob Harris' mother).  Most of what you will read below was collected by Linda Rudd, a distant cousin and appeared several years ago in her blog: Between The Gate Posts. [June and July 2013].  Linda  has been a constant source of inspiration and help to me in my research of family roots in Mississippi.  I am a frequent visitor to her blog  and recommend it highly for a deeper study of black life in Lincoln County, Mississippi.  

 White Capping: A Short Explanation 

White capping is the crime of threatening a person with violence. Ordinarily, members of the minority groups are the victims of whitecapping. Persons are threatened in order to stop or move them away from engaging in certain businesses or occupations.

In the South, White Cap societies were generally made up of poor white farmers, frequently sharecroppers and small landowners, who intended to control black laborers and prevent merchants from acquiring more land. These societies in the South made it their task to attempt to force a person to abandon his home or property. This racial character of whitecapping in the South is thought to have been ignited by the agricultural depression in the 1890s that occurred around the same time. 

With all of the attention centered on producing cotton, the South’s economy became very unbalanced. Many farmers went into debt and lost their lands to merchants through mortgage foreclosures. The merchants and their black laborers and sometimes new white tenants became quick targets for the dispossessed, who seemed to be losing everything. Racism contributed to the problem as well, prosperous black men in the South frequently faced resentment that could be expressed violently. (From Wikipedia)

Eli's Death 

 Made Local and National News

Picture credit: Courtesy of Library of Congress 

The Leader Newspaper
Brookhaven, MS
Dec 23, 1903

Eli Hilson, a negro living about eight miles from Brookhaven was assassinated within about a quarter of a mile of his home Saturday evening, while on his way home from town alone in his buggy. The bullet which killed him entered the side of his head near the ear and came out at the mouth. Death seems to have been instantaneous. The horse went on home, and his owner was found dead in the buggy on his arrival.

Coroner Geo. Lambright, Jr., visited the scene of the murder Monday, impaneled a jury and held an inquest, the verdict being that the deceased came to his death by a gunshot wound at the hands of parties unknown.

Last Winter Hilson, who lived on a farm of his own and was prosperous, was warned by the whitecaps to leave, which warning he disregarded. About three or four weeks ago his home was visited in the night by whitecaps and several volleys fired into it. His wife was sick in bed at the time, with an infant only a few hours old. He still disregarded the warning, and remained on his place. Saturday, he brought a young daughter to town in his buggy to spend Christmas holidays with his brother G. N. W. Hilson, of this city, and as he was returning home between sunset and dark was assassinated. Hilson is the second negro murdered by whitecaps in that portion of Lincoln county within the last month.

From all The Leader can gather of the facts and circumstances, it is a disgraceful state of affairs and calls loudly for determined action and corrective measures by law abiding citizens and all law officers of the county. An old farmer who lives several miles below where this murder occurred stated while in The Leader office Monday, that about all the negroes had been frightened out of his neighborhood, and that all white farmers who had more lands than they could work themselves were left without labor and that these lands will have to lie out, uncultivated.

The Leader is informed that it is the intentions of the British and American Mortgage Company which has been an extensive loaner of money on farm lands in this county, to stop all further loans and instruct its agents and trustees to foreclose all mortgages that are not promptly satisfied before the situation grows worse and the lands become less valuable.

Our local banks share this same feeling of distrust and uneasiness and will either be forced to refuse loans in localities where this disturbance of negro labor prevails, or else demand greater security and a higher rate of interest on such loans as are advanced.

The situation is indeed a serious one to the farmers and the financial interests of the entire county, to say nothing of considerations of humanity and our boasted Christian civilization; and these dastardly whitecaps outrages ought to be suppressed and those who commit them hunted down and brought to justice.

A Rare Conviction in the Segregated South 

Picture credit: Lincoln County Court House, Brookhaven, Ms.

Three murders, beatings, terrorist acts were committed upon African Americans by the Whitecaps in Lincoln County, MS.  Over a thousand people were near or on the Lincoln County courthouse grounds when Judge James Wilkinson announced the sentences of the men convicted of murder in the Whitecaps cases. As each man was sentenced, the crowd shuddered. Oscar Franklin plead guilty to the murder of Eli Hilson, and was sentenced to life in prison in December 1904, about a year after the murder.

Eli's wife Hannah struggle to raise their ten children and maintain the farm. She lost the property through a mortgage foreclosure in 1905. The 74 acres were sold to S. P. Oliver for $439. Oliver was a county supervisor.

Sources:
The Evening News, San Jose, California, December 21, 1904


Next Blog:  What Happened to Hannah and Her Children?

Love to All,

Your Family Griot - Carolyn Harris Betts