whether white or black. The three Melton brothers for years had
whether white or black. The three Melton brothers for years had
relied on the local constable to help violently coerce blacks to work
on their farms. Another white farmer, J. R. Adams, incensed at the
Meltons’ contumacious terrorization of local African Americans,
including his own workers, wrote the at orney general to urge that
the family be investigated for involuntary servitude.20
"In al probability there is no other section of state in which the
crime of peonage is so common as here," Adams wrote. "The
Meltons and their connections are the worst o enders. They have
held negroes in peonage for years. It is a very rare thing that a
negro escapes from there…It is next to impossible for a negro who
has ‘contracted’ with one of this gang to ever get away."
Adams said two years earlier one of Melton's men kil ed a black
worker who at empted to escape from the farm. "A poor lit le
negro girl who is kept at [the constable's] house occasional y runs
away and begs other negroes to let her stay with them to keep
[him] from beating her," Adams continued. "The negroes are so
intimidated that they refuse to shelter her…. It is very hard to get
evidence out of the negroes, for this gang keeps it impressed upon
them that they wil be kil ed if they give evidence."21 The local U.S.
magistrate near Pine Apple agreed, writing the U.S. at orney that
among the fearful black population near the town, there was
virtual y no possibility of convincing witnesses to testify22
Late in the afternoon on Christmas Eve, just four days before the
wedding ceremony, Evander Melton, the bride's seventeen-year-old
cousin and a likely groomsman in the wedding, appeared in an
al eyway near the Pine Apple train station. Evander, the second son
of John and namesake of his imposing uncle, was a fat and
pugnacious boy known in town simply as "Pig." The group of young
black men throwing craps in the al eyway must have known
nothing good could come when Pig Melton, drunk and bel igerent,
pushed his way into the game.
They had few options. Meltons did as they wished among black
people. Besides, the young blacks were caught up in the jovial
ebul ience of the Christmas season—which for southern African
ebul ience of the Christmas season—which for southern African
Americans represented far more than a religious holiday. Christmas
marked the end of the long and di cult cot on harvest—a straining
process that in some years extended from September al the way to
yuletide—and the only payday of the year for most southern blacks.
After the nal cot on was in, tenants and sharecroppers—al those
blacks who had some il usion of independence—came to the white
planter on whose land they lived and asked for "set lement."
Apparently, landowners tal ied the cost of seed, supplies, rent, and
every other purchase taken on interest from their plantation stores
since the previous Christmas, subtracted the total from the value of
each family's share of the cot on they grew, and then paid out the
dif erence in cash.
The reality was endemic fraud. Landowners, acutely aware that
any worker ful y clear of his debts might then at empt to relocate to
a friendlier or more generous white property holder, routinely
exaggerated costs and interest so that virtual y no sharecroppers
could ever ful y extinguish their obligations. Instead, African
Americans typical y left the transaction with a smal cash "bonus" or
loan to use for a few weeks of merriment before work for the new
cot on season would begin again.
The young black men in Pine Apple were quickly burning
through their Christmas windfal —consuming liquor and trading
what lit le cash they retained with the dice bouncing across the
chil y soil.
Soon, the dice turned against the Melton teenager. He grew angry
and loud. His losses mounting, a quarrel ensued. Unexpectedly, a
pistol shot crackled in the crowd, from an unknown gun. More
shots may have been red in response. Whatever the case, Melton
fel to the ground, bleeding profusely. In the pandemonium that
fol owed, the black gamblers ed the scene—rushing to reach the
sanctuary of cabins deep in the forests or scrambling madly to
escape the county before nightfal . Arthur Stuart—a thirty-one-year-
old black farmworker whose wife, two-year-old son, and infant
daughter waited for him on rented land at the edge of town—wasn't
fast enough.
fast enough.
No one knew who fired the shot that hit young Melton—who was
taken to his family's house for a doctor to at end the wound. But
Stuart was black and nearby. He was instantly identi ed as an
accomplice. That he was stil in the town at al when the sheri
came was the strongest evidence of his innocence. Any black man
aware that he was within miles of a shooting of a Melton would
have fled for his life.
There was lit le doubt what would happen next. Word spread on
Christmas Eve that Pig Melton was recuperating at home and would
survive his injury. Yet the Meltons vowed a lesson was stil to be
taught. Late on Christmas night, after the day's church services in
praise of the birth of Jesus, family dinners, and singing of carols
had been nished, a smal group of white men led by fty-one-
year-old Evander M. Melton assembled at the center of Pine Apple.
At 4 A.M., the mob easily broke into the jail—the constable was
assisting them—and beat Stuart senseless in his cel . In short order,
the men doused his body with kerosene and set it afire.
Hoots and cheers arose from the unpaved street outside as the
lynchers rushed out the doors of the jail. But soon more than Stuart
was burning. Flames quickly l ed the rst oor of the building.
Orange and red swel s pushed through the windows and ashed up
the sides of the jail. Then brie y the scene was silent except for the
loud roar of re and the groans of the building as its skeleton
col apsed into an embering heap.
The murder of Arthur Stuart and even the destruction of the jail
would have been an almost routine a air except for what fol owed.
A sudden gust of wind whipped through the town. A shower of
burning embers—thousands of missiles of re—poured into the sky
and then scat ered across Pine Apple. The wispy blanket of cot on
dusting the town ignited unpredictably. A burst of ames appeared
on the porch roof of the farm feed store adjacent to the jail. The
roof of cedar shake shingles was a mass of re within minutes.
Whipped by the gusting winds, the ames leapt next to a wagon
Whipped by the gusting winds, the ames leapt next to a wagon
repair shop, the inferno now rippling across the sky like a zephyr
turned red and gold. It blew onto the town bank, the post o ce,
and then beyond to houses and eight stores clustered at the center
of town. Most devastating, the ames reached the great mounds of
cot on bales stored in and around the ware
houses of the gin and
compress—turning the cubes of burlap-wrapped white cot on into
roaring blocks of fire. Within minutes of Stuart's last cries in his cel ,
the entire commercial district of Pine Apple was a mass of raging
heat and blaze.23 Where just hours before the sounds of "Joy to the
World" sung from the square-note hymnals of the Baptist church
had wafted down the muddy streets, now only the crackling of coals
and flames and the glow of an ashen town penetrated the night.
Blacks in Pine Apple—and across the country—couldn't help but
savor the apocalyptic consequences of the white mob's rampage.
After three hundred years of Christian teaching that it was some
curse or providential intent that placed Africans in slavery and the
purgatory that fol owed it, the re could only be seen as the
Almighty's sign that it was the white man earning his vengeance
now. The ames were "reinforced by God's disapprobation," one
black preacher said. Booker T. Washington wrote to a northern al y:
"The white people are now in quite a state of indignation…. One
wonders if the same indignation would have been shown if the
property of the white people had not been burned."24
Whatever anger surged from other whites whose homes and
businesses had been destroyed, the Meltons stil had a wedding to
complete. Four days after the con agration, the Baptist church, far
enough from town to be spared from the re, was l ed for Leila's
nuptials.
The Meltons were never prosecuted, either for the murder of
Arthur Stuart or for the enslavement of so many black workers who
created their wealth. No peonage cases were ever brought in the
area. Adams, the white informant, was so fearful for his life that he
burned al let ers from the U.S. at orney investigating the incident.
burned al let ers from the U.S. at orney investigating the incident.
The perpetrators of the lynching escaped punishment. Local African
Americans did take bit er solace in a nal turn that seemed to
a rm God's contempt for what the white family had done: three
weeks after the wedding, on January 26, young Pig Melton, fevered
from an infection of his wound, died. He was interred a few steps
from his Uncle Wil iam's precipice—near, but just outside, his
imposing elder's stony line of sight.
Every day that passed after the immolation of Arthur Stuart
without response by the federal government was further rati cation
that the African Americans of the South had been returned to the
white men who sought to control them. Almost exactly a year later,
as if a demonstration that no one should interpret the catastrophe
as evidence of any change in the state of black-white relations in
the town, two more black men from Pine Apple, brothers Edward
and Wil iam Plowly, were accused of murdering a white man and
then hanged by a mob.
Indeed, where federal investigators initial y stirred near panic
among slaveholding farmers when they rst arrived in Alabama,
Georgia, and Florida, the impotence of the investigations was
becoming richly obvious. Even when men were brought to trial for
the most egregious o enses, they hardly risked conviction. Even if
found guilty, they were in no real jeopardy of meaningful penalties.
Just as the federal Freedmen's Bureau agents sent into remote
southern towns had learned immediately after the Civil War, the
new representatives of northern justice brought more risk upon
themselves than to any person stil holding slaves.
Indeed it was open season on Secret Service investigators. A
government auditor sent to check the books of Reese's o ce in
February 1904 found that two deputy marshals employed in the
investigation had been hiding out at their homes in rural Alabama
when they were supposed to have been pursuing slavery cases in
the most hostile areas of the state, Lowndes and Dal as counties—
the Swink family home territory. "The reason for this was that the
persons living in said counties had sent word to the District
At orney and his assistants to the e ect that, if they had regard for
At orney and his assistants to the e ect that, if they had regard for
their personal safety, they would not at empt to prosecute the
peonage people in said counties," wrote the examiner.25
Reese insisted the inquiries must proceed. He wrote to
Washington a month later urgently asking for additional help from
Secret Service agents to protect witnesses who testi ed against ve
whites in Pike County. The holders of slaves fought back violently,
he said, burning the sawmil of one white landowner wil ing to
speak against the defendants, set ing black churches a re, and
intimidating large numbers of African American workers who were
eeing the area. "The lumber mil s were shut down and the farming
interests paralyzed," Reese wrote.26 Department of Justice o cials
waited nearly two weeks to reply, and then indicated that no agents
were available at the time.
Reese continued to draw indictments from grand juries in the
Black Belt, but often with lit le result. Charges against one Alex D.
Stephens in early 1904 al eged that Stephens sold a black worker
named Wil iam Brown to a white man in Co ee County named
Samuel W Tyson in July 1902.27At orneys in the state by now knew
the dril for responding to such actions. Tyson pleaded guilty and
was then pardoned. Charges against Stephens and two others
involved in related seizures and sales of black slaves were
dismissed.
Even as the federal investigations seemed to weaken from the
interior, external opposition to the campaign against slavery
mounted. A mass meeting of sawmil and turpentine camp owners
in Tifton, Georgia, convened in April 1904 to plot strategy and
col ect funds for a legal defense of the involuntary servitude used by
virtual y every member of the group. "Every turpentine operator
and saw mil man, as wel as every one employing labor in this
section, feels that they are a ected," wrote a newspaperman who
at ended the meeting.28
Nearly a year had passed since John Pace—the primary target of
Reese's initial investigation—pleaded guilty to holding debt slaves.
His sentence of fty- ve years—with ve to serve—remained
His sentence of fty- ve years—with ve to serve—remained
suspended. There had been no activity in his appeal of the
constitutionality of the statute under which he pleaded guilty, and
Pace had made no e ort to obtain a presidential pardon for his
crimes like the one the Cosbys had obtained. He remained free on a
$5,000 bond signed by his partner in the slaving enterprise,
Fletcher Turner, and his banker, Wil iam Gray29
By now, even Reese had begun to doubt whether the laws on the
U.S. books were actual y su cient to prohibit the holding of slaves.
In legal lings, Pace's lawyers freely conceded that the farmer
admit ed "unlawful y and knowingly holding a person forcibly and
against his wil and requiring such person to labor." But this did not
technical y t the de nition of peonage, they argued, saying the
arcane statute could only be prosecuted in locations where a formal
system of peonage had once existed—as in New Mexico.
Reese believed they might be legal y correct. "I very much fear,"
he wrote to Washington, that Pace's conviction would be overturned
on that argument.30 Since there was no other U.S. law making it a
crime to hold slaves, Pace would forever go free.
At orney General Knox resigned in June 1904 to accept an
appointment to the U.S. Senate. His successor, Wil iam Moody, a
former congressman from Massachuset s and then secretary of the
navy, pressed for the existing cases of involuntary servitude
violations to be ful y pursued. But it was obvious that Reese's
enthusiasm for a sweeping assault on new slavery did not arouse
him.
In December of 1904, At orney General Moody made one last
major federal gesture in the campaign against peonage, personal y
arguing to the U.S. Supreme Court that the conviction of Samuel M.
Clyat for having two black men seized and enslaved more than
three years earlier should be upheld. Clyat 's slow-moving appeal—
using the same argument as Pace and his fel ow defendants that the
anti-peonage statute couldn't be applied, had nal y reached the
highest court in the land. Three months later, the court surprised
Reese and other government lawyers across the country. Clyat won
Reese and other government lawyers across the country. Clyat won
a new trial on minute technical grounds. But the court upheld the
validity of the anti-peonage statute.31
The practical import of the ruling was to sustain the fundamental
il egality of involuntary servitude and of the federal judicial
system's one limited weapon for at acking it. But at the same time,
the opinion by Justice David Brewer also a rmed that the South's
growing practice of using hyper-technical interpretations of U.S.
law to thwart the rights of black men on a wide range of issues—
from segregated schools and housing to voter registration and
government aid for the poor—would be abided by the federal
courts.
Days later, in Savannah, Georgia, Judge Speer, emboldened by the
section of the Supreme Court ruling declaring peonage abhorrent,
ordered from his bench that Georgia's vast system of charging
African Americans in the lower courts of towns and sentencing
Slavery by Another Name Page 39