Alice + Freda Forever: A Murder in Memphis

by Alexis Coe

  Calvin McDowell, Thomas Moss, and Henry Stewart were joint operators of the People’s Grocery Company, a cooperative market in “the Curve,” Memphis’s densely populated African American neighborhood. The Curve already had a grocery store, owned and operated by W.H. Barrett, a white man who resented the competition. It was one of a series of clashes over the nature of free market competition reverberating throughout Memphis. The city’s white population had become incensed at the increasingly improved economic status of, and increasing competition posed by, African Americans. In this case, tensions reached a head after store hours, when Barrett entered through the front door of the People’s Grocery, and his white friends through the back.

  The People’s Grocery had been expecting this, and had sought legal counsel in advance. The Curve was a mile beyond city limits, and there was no police protection, thus the three men were advised to arms themselves—but with extreme caution. In the heat the moment, however, three of the intruders were wounded. They wore plain clothes for afterhours trespassing, but during the day, it turned out they donned the uniforms of deputies. Once McDowell, Moss, and Stewart realized this, they threw down their firearms and offered themselves up for arrest. The injured aggressors were taken to the doctor, and the ones who had initiated the violence but emerged unscathed were let go. Dozens of African Americans were arrested and taken to jail. Bail was denied, as was communication with the outside world.

  It is hard to imagine that a posse of angry white men, out for blood, was met with much resistance at the jail. This was a group whose members Alice, and likely most white Memphians, would have recognized. Some were neighbors, and others were likely community and business leaders.

  It was rumored that Judge Julius DuBose—who presided over all of the cases in the jail— was among the white mob in those early morning hours. If he was not part of the gang, he was certainly sympathetic to their cause. His personal history was typical of white men who felt threatened by social and economic changes in the post–Civil War South. He had been raised by a planter who benefitted from slavery. His family suffered financially after their slaves were emancipated and they were finally required to pay wages to those who stayed on as staff. The judge was a founding member of the Tennessee Ku Klux Klan, not simply out of bigotry but, it seems, as a way to protect the material interests of his family and community.

  Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Henry Stewart were taken to an open field just outside of the city limits. Their bodies were later found, disfigured by shotgun and buckshot wounds. McDowell’s eyes had been gouged out, and his fingers reduced to bloody stubs.

  The Appeal Avalanche celebrated the lynching for being “one of the most orderly of its kind ever conducted.”80 No white men were ever arrested for participating in the horrific killings.

  The next day, the sheriff led a hundred men to the Curve with strict instructions to “shoot down any Negro who appears to be making trouble.”81 To give the whites an even greater advantage, the arms and ammunition of the Tennessee Rifles, the African American guard, were confiscated. The money drawer of the People’s Grocery was emptied by those tasked with patrolling the Curve, who also helped themselves to various goods, no doubt celebrating with the wine and cigars they pilfered. Barrett bought whatever stock was leftover—at one eighth of its cost—and added it to his own store’s offerings. The message was received, and the People’s Grocery did not survive long after the lynching.

  Alice may have heard the lynching that night. She may have known those being lynched. It is almost guaranteed that she knew at least some of the men who carried out the lynching. Regardless, they all lived in the same city, and travelled on the same roads. Alice probably passed Thomas Moss during Freda’s stay at the widow Kimbrough’s home. He was one of the oldest letter carriers in Memphis, and had continued to deliver mail while the nascent People’s Grocery worked on becoming a sustainable business. His route included the office of the Free Speech, the African American press on Hernando Street.

  News of the lynching quickly reached Ida B. Wells, a twenty-nine-year-old editor and writer whom Thomas Moss had befriended. She was enraged by the brutal murders—and unsettled by them. There had been a sharp increase in lynchings in Memphis, with the violence usually justified as retribution, an appropriate form of vigilante justice after allegations of rape by an African American man.82 Wells, born a slave in Holly Springs, Mississippi, was well acquainted with this rationale. But the People’s Grocery lynching lacked any accusation of sexual assault. The retaliation was mostly economic in motivation, clearly meant to reinforce white preeminence in Memphis.

  Two months after the lynching, Wells began to write a series of groundbreaking, provocative editorials rejecting “the old thread-bare lie that Negro men assault white women.” She warned men of the South who terrorized those around her with impunity: Their continued violence would inevitably force a realization that “will be very damaging to the moral reputation of their women.”83 If white women engaged in sexual relations with African American men, it likely occurred because they instigated it.

  An African American paper daring to publish the news that white men were lying, that they were using the virtue of their women as an excuse for violence, would itself have been a major affront in the 1890s. The suggestion that, in the rare instances when sex between black men and white women did occur, it was the white women who had likely invited the transgression absolutely incensed white Memphians. The outrage expressed by local papers—the same ones covering Alice’s case with the utmost reverence for white fathers and a paternalistic view of women—declared it an unbearable degradation that should be handled immediately, and without restraint.84

  The Public Ledger’s only nighttime competition, the Memphis Evening Scimitar, assumed Wells was a man, and that the community should make an example out of him.

  Patience under such circumstances is not a virtue. If the negroes themselves do not apply the remedy without delay it will be the duty of those whom he has attacked to tie the wretch who utters these calumnies to a stake at the intersection of Main and Madison Sts., brand him in the forehead with a hot iron and perform upon him a surgical operation with a pair of tailor’ shears.85

  They did not brand or carry out any other form of violence on Wells, but it was not for lack of trying. A white mob, one that may have again included Judge DuBose, destroyed the Free Speech offices on Hernando Street. By that time, they had realized that Wells was a woman, but their much lauded sense of chivalry did not extend to African American women. Wells was out of town during the violence, but her absence did not go unnoticed. If she returned, the vigilantes promised a lynching. She ultimately left Memphis for New York, where she would become one of the most well known and respected political activists in America.

  IN ADDITION TO ALICE MITCHELL, Ida B. Wells was the only other woman in 1892 Memphis whose story was circulated around the country. Both women undermined, challenged, and disregarded white male authority in very different ways—and the reactions they garnered, and the treatment they received, had far more to do with their respective races than the transgression itself. White men threatened to kill Wells for what she wrote, whereas no one wanted to see Alice, who actually committed murder, hanged for her crime.86

  Wells, Mitchell, and the operators of People’s Grocery lived concurrent lives in the same city, but they occupied distinct social, physical, and economic spaces within it. That separation has certainly influenced our collective memory, but their stories shaped crucial moments in twentieth century America.87

  In the 1890s, the United States was cementing its national identity, and it was predicated upon maintaining the white home on a national level. Same-sex love and African American men and women were cogent threats to the rigid hierarchy of race and gender, and the reactions on a local level from the judge, jail, sheriff, and newspapers speak to the national construction of American modernity.88

  THE HYPOTHETICAL CASE

  BY THE TIME ALICE MITCH
ELL’S lunacy inquisition began on July 18, 1892, the defense was ready. Gantt and Wright had spent the months following Lillie’s habeas corpus hearing much as they had spent the days following the murder: crafting a message, finding support for it, and then skillfully releasing the information to the public.

  They had allowed some access to Alice, but exclusively to the area’s most prominent medical experts—all of whom could be counted on to offer a diagnosis of insanity.

  The prosecution also attempted to solicit medical experts, but they could not find anyone willing to support the position that same-sex love did not equal insanity. The superintendent of the Western Hospital for the Insane in nearby Bolivar, Tennessee, declined to even meet with Alice, admitting he was convinced by what he read in the papers.89

  And therein lay the brilliance of the present insanity plea: It explained what appeared to be inexplicable, and recast a murderess as the sympathetic victim of her own illness.

  If the plea failed, however, it would only be a matter of time before Alice was sentenced to death. A murder trial would have to take place first, but given her confession, a guilty verdict was all but guaranteed.

  In 1892, “present insanity” was not unlike our modern day understanding of “incompetent to stand trial.” Alice’s mental state at the time of the murder was a concern, but of far less importance than her current mental state. However, in order to establish “prior insane conduct,” Alice’s lifelong mental state, from birth up to the present, was relevant. The defense’s case was laid out in “The Hypothetical Case.”90

  Much like the initial statement circulated by the defense, which read like an interview, the Hypothetical Case was a relatively short, narrative biography of Alice Mitchell. Her life, from birth to the present day, was reduced to just twelve pages.91 It was a preview of the defense’s legal strategy, incorporating both the testimony they would present in court, and the input of expert witnesses who would take the stand over the next ten days.

  “Alice was a nervous, excitable child, and somewhat under size,” it began, proceeding to illustrate how her traits, interests, and behaviors had intensified over her lifetime. In a strategic move, the defense leaked the psychiatric vignette to the press ahead of the inquisition. It appeared in newspapers read by the public and, most importantly, by the jury. The Hypothetical case provided a roadmap that led to one obvious conclusion: Alice was a victim of her body—just as Freda had been.

  “The question is, whether the defendant has mental capacity sufficient to make a rational defense to the charge in the indictment,” Judge DuBose told the jury.92

  Though it was presented as a narrative, all the information contained in the document could be filed under a list of six major points integral to the plea: poor health, bizarre conduct, unfeminine behavior, masculine interests, improper attachments, and finally, the role of hereditary influence.

  THE HYPOTHETICAL CASE

  Alice was a nervous, excitable child, somewhat under size. As she grew she did not manifest interest in those childish amusements and toys that girls are fond of.

  When only four or five years old she spent much time at a swing in the yard of the family in performing such feats upon it as skinning the cat, and hanging by an arm or leg. She was fond of climbing, and was expert at it.

  She delighted in marbles and tops, in base ball and foot ball, and was a member of a children’s base ball nine. She spent much time with her brother Frank, who was next youngest, playing marbles and spinning tops. She preferred him and his sports to her sisters. He practiced with her at target shooting with a small rifle, to her great delight. She excelled this brother at tops, marbles, and feats of activity.

  She was fond of horses, and from early childhood would go among the mules of her father and be around them when being fed. About six or seven years ago her father purchased a horse. She found great satisfaction in feeding and currying him. She often rode him about the lot bareback, as a boy would. She was expert in harnessing him to the buggy, in looking after the harness, and mending it when anything was amiss. To the family she seemed a regular tomboy.

  She was willful and whimsical. She disliked sewing and needlework. Her mother could not get her to do such work. She undertook to teach her crocheting, but could not. She was unequal in the manifestation of her affections. To most persons, even her relatives, she seemed distant and indifferent. She was wholly without that fondness for boys that girls usually manifest.

  She had no intimates or child sweethearts among the boys, and when approaching womanhood, after she was grown, she had no beaux and took no pleasure in the society of young men. She was sometimes rude, and always indifferent to young men. She was regarded as mentally wrong by young men toward whom she had thus acted.

  About the time her womanhood was established she was subject to very serious and protracted headaches. She had far more than the usual sickness at that period. She was subject to nervous spells, in which she would visibly tremble or shake. She is still at times subject to these attacks of extreme nervous excitement, but does not, now, and never did, wholly lose consciousness in them but upon one occasion.

  In order to convince the jury that Alice was “presently insane,” the state also required that the defense establish “hereditary influence.” This was not a notion particular to Tennessee, as F.L. Sim, one of the doctors called in to assess Alice, explained in the Memphis Medical Monthly. In the nineteenth century, bodily pathology, or symptoms that began in the body and could therefore be inherited, were considered “the most common and potent of all causes of mental disturbances.”

  Fortunately for Gantt and Wright, Isabella Mitchell’s history of congenital insanity was “proven beyond a doubt.”93 The Mitchell family’s physician, Dr. Thomas Griswald Comstock, offered a convincing disposition, and brought a copy of her “certificate of confinement” as evidence.

  Following the birth of Isabella’s first child in 1857, George Mitchell grew concerned about his wife’s displays of melancholia.94 He called Dr. Com-stock, who, after a month of house calls, confirmed Uncle George’s suspicions. Isabella was diagnosed with “puerperal insanity,” a derangement or unstable state brought about by childbirth, and placed in a hospital. During her stay, she supposedly passed from melancholia to insanity to acute mania, and finally, to recovery. After two months of restraint, she was released, and eagerly returned home, excited to see her infant.

  But in Isabella’s absence—and possibly as a result of it—the infant died. She was not told of the death until she arrived home, and began searching for a baby who was no longer there. When she discovered the tragedy, Isabella was understandably shocked and overcome with grief—or, according to Dr. Comstock’s testimony, “her mind became again unbalanced.” Perhaps fearing that her husband would once again have her institutionalized, Isabella managed to resume her wifely duties in just a few days, though she still displayed the signs of melancholia that had first landed her in the asylum.95

  Isabella gave birth to seven children during her lifetime, only four of which would survive to adulthood.96 According to testimony, she “evinced more or less mental disturbance with each parturition, especially after the birth of Alice.” This was a salient point in a nineteenth century courtroom, where psychiatrists understood the defendant’s disease to be of the body. When Isabella had Alice, her final and most challenging pregnancy, they believed she had passed her insanity on to her daughter.

  The symptoms associated with puerperal insanity were constantly shifting, but they all amounted to a condition that undermined true womanhood. The illness was broadly defined to include, at one end of the spectrum, women who denied their baby nourishment, or seemed to pose an actual danger to them. But it also included mothers who appeared disinterested in their offspring. Women who were gloomy, or apathetic to the needs of those around them, unkempt or seemingly overwhelmed, were also diagnosed with puerperal insanity—sometimes called “insanity of pregnancy,” or “insanity of lactation.” By World War I,
the designation disappeared and was replaced with “postpartum depression.”97

  Dr. Comstock’s treatment points to a problematic relationship between the predominately male physicians and their female patients. This kind of power dynamic was a privilege that extended widely to encompass all men at the time—hence George’s influential role in both his wife and daughter’s diagnoses. As Michel Foucault points out in his book Madness and Civilization, the physicians who sought to define reason also silenced “unreason,” and this became a convenient way to regulate people, even whole classes of people, whom society labeled deviant.

  The defense lawyers carefully crafted the Hypothetical Case in order to prepare the public for their courtroom performance, and to ensure that testimony stayed on message. They relied on family members and other witnesses who knew Alice to substantiate the claims and anecdotes during the first half of the lunacy inquisition, and for the expert witnesses to do the same during the second half.

  And while Gantt and Wright did everything in their power to avoid it, Alice Mitchell would indeed take the stand.

  VICARIOUS MENSTRUATION

  I DON’T CARE IF I’M HUNG,” Alice screamed during the murder, but her family did. The Mitchells’ testimony, which was unfailingly consistent with the defense’s Hypothetical Case, would not only help Alice avoid certain death, it would ensure her speedy disappearance into an asylum.