Goat Castle

by Karen L. Cox

  Thomas’s testimony, and that of other Freedmen’s Bureau officials, convinced Congress it needed to take more definitive steps to institute real Reconstruction. Republicans ushered in the era of Radical Reconstruction, which lasted for eleven years, 1867–1876, in Mississippi, as it sought to fulfill the promise of citizenship for freedmen. More than two hundred black Mississippians held public office during those years, and the state sent the first two black senators to Congress — Hiram Revels, as mentioned above, and Blanche Bruce.20

  White Mississippians, shocked by their reversal of fortune and control, were having none of it. They brought Reconstruction to an end through violence and intimidation. Ku Klux Klansmen hid beneath costumes, pretending to be the ghosts of Confederate soldiers. They beat or murdered Republicans and terrorized black men and women. And they did so with impunity as officials looked away, intimidated by the punishment inflicted on others.21

  Pink, and Sister’s parents, were born into this world of intimidation and violence and had to navigate it if they were to survive. And while James and Nellie stayed in Natchez, whites in the state gave black Mississippians justifiable reasons to join the migration of blacks from across the South to cities throughout the North in the early twentieth century. Pink chose Chicago.

  There was a saying in the black community that “it’s better to be a lamppost in Chicago than a big deal in Natchez.”22 Simply put, Natchez was small potatoes compared to the Windy City. Chicago was a vibrant metropolis, and there someone like Pink, who took on the name of George Pearls, could be part of a larger black community made up of thousands of like-minded folks from all over the South. The music that blared from local bars had a familiar ring, too — jazz and blues from New Orleans and Mississippi adapted to the rapid pace of city living.

  He eventually settled in the village of Summit, a Chicago suburb located about twelve miles from the city. There he lived with his second wife, Meadie, a Texas native who was sixteen years his junior. His daughter from a previous marriage, Amelia Garner, lived nearby. By 1930, George and Meadie rented a house at 7727 Sixty-Second Street, just down the block from the Corn Products Refining Company, where he worked. At the time, the plant was the largest corn refinery in the world and manufactured products like cornstarch under the brand name Argo. In fact, the area where the couple lived was known as Argo before it was annexed by Summit.23

  If there ever was a melting pot, Summit was it. One of the largest of Chicago’s suburbs, the area had grown from fewer than six hundred residents in 1900 to more than sixty-five hundred in 1930. African Americans made up only 7.5 percent of residents in 1930, which stood in stark contrast to Natchez, where more than half of the population was black. The majority who lived there were natives with foreign parentage or who were themselves foreign-born: Poles, Croats, Slovaks, Russians, and even a few Mexicans. George and Meadie’s neighbors reflected that diversity, as they included Polish, Lithuanian, and Mexican households in addition to families of black southern migrants from Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina.24

  George worked with many of those same people, black and white, at the refinery. But in 1932, the effects of the Great Depression meant that many of these men lost their jobs. This likely happened to George Pearls, which is why he left his Chicago suburb in the summer of 1932. Desperate, he returned to his native Mississippi, to familiar land and familiar work. He packed up a large steamer trunk of his belongings and set south, eventually landing not in Greenville, not in Jackson or McComb, but in Natchez. He made a conscious decision in choosing the Bluff City, not a random one, because it was his hometown and he knew the whites he had once worked for, including, for a brief time, Duncan Minor.25

  As was common given the conditions of roads at the time, he traveled to Natchez by train, on the Illinois Central, which ran between Chicago and New Orleans. When he got to town he hitched a ride to 33 Beaumont Street, where Zula Curtis, a forty-six-year-old widow, ran a boardinghouse. He did not stay there long, maybe a week, when he moved his belongings to 230 St. Catherine Street in the duplex shared by Emily Burns, her mother, and their boarder Poe. Maybe room and board was cheaper, but it appears that George may have taken a personal interest in Sister and she in him. Nonetheless, he took the time to write his wife, Meadie, a letter:

  Dear Wife Just a few lines as to let you hear from me this leaves me well and I made my arivel [sic] to Natchez safe and dear I do hope this will fine [sic] you feeling better so I am in Natchez for awhile so I just wants to let you know where I am at so you be sweet and let me hear from you real soon. I will write you a long letter next time so this is all from your husband G. Pearls

  Address to 230 St. Catherine Street, Natchez, Miss.26

  As the nation headed deeper into economic collapse, jobs nationally dried up, and if there was any work for black men in Adams County in 1932, it was most likely farm labor or piecemeal work doing odd jobs for local whites. That summer in Natchez, Pink struggled to find the most basic employment. Testimony collected after Jennie Merrill’s death suggests that he had sought work from both her and Duncan Minor and was rebuffed. Minor later recalled that a Negro, who had given his name as Lawrence Williams, had been “insolent” when Minor turned him away. In truth, any black man who did not show deference to white authority was likely to be regarded as disrespectful. Perhaps Williams suggested to both Jennie Merrill and Duncan Minor that he knew they had the money to hire him, which is why they considered him “insolent.” To whites like Jennie and Duncan, whose family wealth had been built on cotton and slaves, he was just another black face whom they did not know by name. Yet Pink remembered his treatment, and he was right to believe that they had money. Because they did. Even during the Great Depression, rich people were still rich.27

  So, as July turned into August, Pink was desperate for income, though how he came to strike up a conversation with Dick Dana and Octavia Dockery remains a mystery. Perhaps, after being rejected for work by Jennie Merrill, he simply walked next door to Glenwood to see if he might be hired. The decaying old mansion and the poorly maintained land on which it sat should have instantly signaled to him that he would find no paid work there. And yet on Thursday afternoon, August 4, Pink found himself talking with Dick and Octavia.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  MURDER AT GLENBURNIE

  Dick Dana and Octavia Dockery had struggled to make ends meet for years. It was bad enough that goats roamed their house; they were also reduced to killing and eating them, too. Octavia regularly waged court battles with the various owners of Glenwood who had purchased it for unpaid taxes, managing to keep the property in litigation and herself and her ward in a home. As the pair spoke with the black man who called himself Lawrence Williams, the three of them swiftly realized that they shared more in common than poverty. They all had a disdain for the “haves,” especially for the owner of Glenburnie. In Octavia Dockery’s case, her contempt for Jennie Merrill went back for more than a decade. Merrill had money but had gone after what little Octavia and Dick had because of some trespassing hogs and goats. Williams’s anger stemmed from being dismissed by wealthy whites he believed should have hired him. He had worked in the corn refinery and lived in a Chicago suburb for so long, he had nearly forgotten what it was like to deal with white planters like Merrill and Duncan Minor. Both refreshed his memory.1

  No one will ever know the actual content of their conversation, but together the three spoke about Jennie Merrill. Octavia assumed her old foe kept money in the house, since the Depression led people to safeguard their cash at home rather than risk keeping it in the bank. She also knew that Duncan Minor’s nightly visits to Glenburnie were so regular, between 8:30 and 9:00 P.M., she could set her watch by him. So, she and Williams made the plan to rob Merrill that evening, just after sunset but before Minor arrived. All stood to benefit from any money found, but Octavia no doubt relished the idea of getting revenge on Jennie. And wild-eyed Dick found it all very exciting. Pink could return to his life in Chicago with mon
ey in his pocket and tell his wife that the trip to Natchez to find work had been a success. And Jennie Merrill would get her just deserts.

  Glenburnie, 1932. (Courtesy of the Thomas H. and Joan W. Gandy Photograph Collection, Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections, Special Collections, Hill Memorial Library, Louisiana State University Libraries, Baton Rouge.)

  After his chat with Dick and Octavia, Pink walked through the small forest of scraggly trees behind Glenwood and cut across Duncan Park, over the Mississippi Central Railroad, through George Kelly’s estate, Melrose, and up Cedar Alley before reaching the little shack on St. Catherine Street. He didn’t speak a word to Sister or her mother, Nellie, about the plan he had hatched with the odd couple who lived alongside the Kingston Road, though he may have told Poe where to meet him later that evening.2

  After dinner, as the afternoon sun drifted downward, Pink asked Sister to go on a walk with him. She willingly accepted, enamored by this man of the world from Chicago. As they left St. Catherine Street they strolled back across the Melrose estate, walking along the alley-like path adjacent to the railroad, and then into Duncan Park. But their walk did not end there. Pink led them farther into the nearby woods, navigating weeds, bayous, and unruly palm fronds, until they came to an opening among towering moss-covered trees in the middle of which stood a ramshackle, two-story antebellum house that local blacks called the “spooky mansion.”3

  As Sister waited in the opening, Pink walked toward the house to meet with the occupants of this decaying estate. She had never seen them before, and something about them appeared strange to her. Both appeared to be a good ten years older than Pink. The man was tall and his beard was long and graying. His hair was also long and stringy, as though it was never combed or washed. Even at a distance, he looked grubby. The woman was also on the tall side, wearing a straw hat and a threadbare morning dress. Her skin was tan and weathered.

  Sister may have heard of the “Wild Man” and the “Goat Woman,” because black folks had originally given them their nicknames, but it was something different to see both in the flesh.4 She noticed that the pair talked with Pink as though they had already met him. During their walk, Pink had told Sister that he wanted to get money from Merrill but did not say what he had in mind. She swiftly realized, however, that he and these odd white people had plotted to rob Jennie Merrill. Terrified, Sister wanted to leave and head for home, but it was too late to escape. Pink threatened to kill her now that she knew of their plans.5

  Only three hundred yards separated the Dana and Merrill estates, and as they prepared to head west to Glenburnie, Dick gave Pink an old brown overcoat, the one that he got from the Skunk’s Nest when John Geiger vacated the place. Maybe he thought it would provide a good cover, as daylight turned to dusk.

  Around seven o’clock the four of them — Pink and Sister, Dick and Octavia — headed toward Glenburnie. They fumbled their way through the woods and overgrowth, across the snaky portion of Glenwood, slipping through the wire fence as Octavia’s goats had done a dozen times, except they weren’t there for Jennie’s roses. They wanted the old biddy’s money.

  Once they crossed onto Merrill’s estate, they all noticed Jennie’s German shepherd, who was her constant companion. Normally the dog had free rein, but after it killed one of Jennie’s pet kittens, she had tethered it to a tree behind the rear of the house. One of the four, perhaps Pink or even Dick, untied the dog and put it inside a nearby barn. Now certain that the dog posed no threat, they decided to go under the house, where they sat quietly, listening. Pink wanted to determine Miss Merrill’s location within the house. He heard the old woman humming, and then he motioned to Sister to stand watch outside. He placed the old overcoat in front of his face to protect his identity and gingerly climbed the steps of the front porch before going inside. Sister later confessed that her boarder Poe was there, too, convinced by Pink to join them when they ran into him in the dirt alley along the railroad.6

  Near dusk, Jennie Merrill went to her bedroom to light the silver oil lamp she used to read by. It provided her only light, since her home had no electricity. Her maid, Effie Stanton, was away, and the tenants who lived on her property were in their own homes or getting ready for evening church services. Her German shepherd was just out back and would let her know when company arrived. Of course, these days the only real company she entertained was her cousin Duncan Minor. Still in her bedroom slippers, she began humming a tune as she lay down in her bed to read, still wearing the combs that kept her hair off of her neck in the stifling August heat.

  Jennie had received a substantial inheritance from her father, and though by 1932 she did not lead nearly the extravagant life she had in her youth, she was still a wealthy woman, even by Depression-era standards. She owned plantations in Concordia Parish, in addition to her home Glenburnie, and had several investments. Glenburnie, built in 1833, was modest compared to Elms Court, the house where she was born. It was a single-story home with a porch that extended across the front, upheld by Tuscan columns, and then wrapped around the right-hand side of the house. What people did not know, except for maybe her cousin Duncan and local bankers, is that she never kept more than a few dollars with her at any one time.

  As she sat in bed reading by the light of the silver lamp, waiting for Duncan to arrive, she heard someone come through her front door. Moments later, she spotted a man walking toward her, hidden behind a brown overcoat. Why hadn’t her dog barked when he came on the property? Who would enter her home unannounced? She may have recognized the middle-aged black man who recently asked her for money and something to eat. She had fed him but said no to giving him money.

  What happened next, no one knows for sure. Louis Terrell, a local black citizen, said Pink showed some men a .32 Colt pistol earlier in the day down at Hedges Store and told them that he knew where to get “plenty of money” if he could find someone who “had the nerve” to go with him. He fired the gun several times into the air, Terrell said, “to show he was a bad man.”7

  Jennie had guns, too, and wasn’t afraid to use them. She kept a similar pistol in her purse. Her car mechanic had seen it several times when she paid him to fix her car. She also owned a .22 rifle, which she allegedly leveled at local blacks she hired to work for her, as if she had forgotten that slavery had ended decades before. She had a reputation among her tenants for shooting at Octavia’s trespassing livestock — the hogs and the goats — because they were always causing damage and ruin to her property. It is doubtful she feared her intruder.8

  Pink’s intention was to get money from Jennie Merrill, but she fought back. After hitting her in the face with the butt of his gun to try and knock her out, she managed to get up from her bed, running to get her purse in the dining room just outside of her bedroom door. A scuffle broke out between the two, and shots were fired. Was it Pink’s gun? Or had he taken Jennie’s own gun from her? Either way, a .32 pistol went off. A bullet missed her and landed in the door frame to her bedroom. She began to scream and Pink shot again, and then a third time. One bullet hit her in the upper left chest. Another bullet pierced her neck and tore through her jugular vein, fatally wounding her. Jennie seems to have tried to escape to her bedroom, which is where she fell to the floor, blood pooling around her.9

  Sister, standing outside on the porch, heard the scuffle, the shots, and the screaming. Octavia and Dick went inside. The group needed to think fast. It was close to eight o’clock and becoming more difficult to see. Duncan Minor would be there soon. Poe handed the silver lamp from Jennie’s bedroom to Sister and went back inside to help Pink. Jennie Merrill may have been a tiny woman — her car mechanic estimated she didn’t even weigh ninety-eight pounds — but Pink did not have the strength to carry her alone. So he and Poe picked up Jennie’s now lifeless body and took her through the dining room, where one of her bloody slippers and hair combs fell to the floor. They carried her through the door that led to the side porch, circling around to the front of the house, and then down
the stairs while Sister held the lamp that lit their path.10

  Once outside, the men carried the body toward the rocky driveway about one hundred feet from the house, where they slipped and dropped Jennie on the ground. They could not see it, but the second of her bedroom slippers fell off, along with another of her hair combs. She was still bleeding profusely, so that when they picked her up again, another pool of blood had gathered. As they rushed to dispose of the body, they headed toward the woods that separated Merrill’s estate from Glenwood. They got about a hundred yards from Jennie’s house before they tossed her body — face up — into a thicket near a deep ravine. Sister, who had accompanied them, threw the lamp in the weeds about twenty feet away. Pink yelled at her to pick it back up and light it, but she hesitated because she had no matches. So he grabbed the lamp and lit it himself.11

  The three of them headed back toward the house, and as Sister stood watch outside, Pink and Poe went back in. Octavia and Dick were already there. They ransacked Merrill’s home, pulling drawers from furniture, including an old washstand and a chifferobe. One of them went through Jennie’s purse and another flipped the mattress on her bed looking for a stash of money, but there was none to be had. A woman was dead. And not just any woman — Jennie Merrill was planter aristocracy in a town that prided itself on that heritage.

  The unlikely group scattered. Pink and Sister went back as they came — through the woods, crossing over railroad tracks, and then through the Melrose estate to a back road that led to her house on St. Catherine Street. Poe, who was likely at the scene of the crime, headed into town by Homochitto Street.