The Corbin Expulsion of 1919

[Music] to tell the story of what happened in October of 1919 you really have to go back to understand how important Corbin was as a hub for the L&N but it's really not until the teens and especially World War one that the coal industry really ramps up and that affects Corbin because it was the receiving yard for all the coal that came out of Harlan County so in 1910 International Harvester builds the company town of Benham and then with World War one there's a boom and steel manufacturing so US Steel spends millions to build the company town of Lynch in Harlan County and the Harlan County total coal tonnage goes from well under a million in 1910 to in 1920 it's something like 3 or 4 million and so with that increase you have to increase the size of the receiving rail yard which is exactly what these black workers were sent to Corbin to do they were housed in rail cars and in tents on Elenin property they were not meant to be a permanent fixture in the town just like other african-americans leaving the south at this time in large numbers really for the first time they were heading to industrialized areas in this case Eastern Kentucky and really southwestern Virginia and so in February of 1919 the lnn announces plans to upgrade the Corbin yards to the tune of several million dollars and they bring up these african-americans from the south to work as construction workers in the yard there were some african-american families already in Corbin one of them her name was Emma Woods she was the matron of the passenger Depot and also ran a boarding house and there was also the family of Alex Tye who was an African American Porter in the master mechanics office and so these were African Americans that had lived in Corbin in some cases owned homes and had had roots in the area before the arrival of this fairly large work crew arrived from the south to live and work in the rail yards there was a construction road paving crew from Louisville they were working on paving Center and main streets in Corbin and that was about somewhere around 40 workers and they were also living in a boarding house so really for a town in 1910 that had a total of around 60 African American residents out of 2,500 this increase of several hundred was a pretty dramatic one on the night of October 29th a F Thompson who was a switchman for the lnn was heading home after attending a carnival in the rail yards and the story as he tells it is that in the woods he was overtaken by two african-american men members of the work crew who stabbed him robbed him and left him for dead and from there he crawls to his neighbor's house who was a physician and he was in pretty serious condition and in the aftermath it's actually discovered that it was not two of the african-americans from the work crew was actually one or two white men possibly in blackface that robbed Thompson and this is borne out in several reminisces from Corbin residents and throughout the night and the next day rumor circulates around the town and really in the railyards themselves in the morning a man named Pistol Pete Rogers his real name was Stephen Peter Rogers but his nickname was Pistol Pete because of the gun that he liked to carry and wave around he and another lnn worker arrived at the cars of the construction foreman for the L&N and they interrogate him they want to know if he knows anything about this stabbing and robbing that happened the night before and they also have some of the black workers there who deny all knowledge of the incident the construction foreman says he doesn't know anything about it but then throughout the day other rumors circulates there's a sign posted in the Roundhouse in the arts that says quote all Negroes will be run out of Corbin tonight and another construction foreman for the lnn is measuring up some rail during the afternoon and over here's railroad workers in the yard sort of plotting and planning for what's going to happen later that night and all this stuff is available in testimonies that you know are publicly available and you can read them in about nine o'clock some of the black workers report hearing gunshots in the south end of the corbin yards and this is really the start of the mob action and what happens throughout the night and some of the construction workers come to the foreman and they say what's happening they say look we're in trouble we need you to help us so the foreman goes to the chief of police and he tells him what's happening and the Chief of Police says basically we're helpless look I can't do anything about it just kind of go along don't cause any trouble and all this will be over they're not gonna be harmed then I'm gonna be killed but just look do what the mob wants you to do so the L&N construction foreman buy tickets for their black workers they send them to the passenger Depot and they buy them a ticket out town and what's interesting after that is that the mob doesn't stop with the construction workers from there they go into the town and they start going to different spots that they know that african-americans are either boarding so in the case of the the road construction crew they know where they're boarding at and they know where african-americans are living in the town so they're they make stops at each of these places and order african-americans out and they order them to the Depot but they come across a marching band at a Republican rally at the graded school the mob sort of commandeered them and forces them to march along with the mob and again in this testimony it's interesting to see that members of the band sort of don't realize what's happening until they sort of look around and of course there's some occasional gunshots eventually they realize that you know they are being used to do a racial expulsion and some of them protest and want to get out of line they don't want to do it and Pistol Pete Rogers in the testimony it's said that he orders them back into line and says follow Pistol Pete you know we're going around town we're rounding up all the african-americans in Corbin so this process is repeated throughout the night you know they go to the railroad YMCA they try to get the janitor it was african-american out of there and they send him to the depot they round up the african-american road construction crew send them to the depot but it's also it's not as orderly as that because there are instances in some cases where african-americans just run and they run to Barbourville they run to London they hide in the woods they're not all sort of orderly being sent to the depot so it's a chaotic scene in many ways really the expulsion lasts from about 9:00 p.m. to about 2:30 or 3:00 o'clock in the morning when the last train leaves for Knoxville Tennessee and after that the very next day Alex Ty the Porter that I mentioned earlier he had been hiding the entire night in the storeroom of the Manhattan Hotel which was right across the street from the depot and he was hiding with his stepson and his wife had found solace with another white family in town and so they they all kind of meet up at the house around 4:00 a.m. and they find that the house is just like utterly ransacked all of their stuff has stolen money is stolen weapons jewelry anything like that and so from there they move all of their stuff to Barbourville because they know they can't live in Corbin anymore and again an Alex Ty's testimony he talks about this that they would take trains back and forth every single day starting at about 10:30 to about 3:00 p.m. so they were not there after dark they would just come during the day get what little stuff they had left moved it to Barbourville and then from there they moved to Ravenna Kentucky where Alex took a similar job with the L&N in the immediate aftermath of the expulsion other stories like this are evident there are some African American baggage workers that were run out that night that try to return later on in November to work again and I believe it's the third shift of the railroad worker so really the dead of night our work walking around in the yard and they basically tell them that you're not welcome here anymore over the next few months the work of the expulsion is sort of carried out through word-of-mouth this happens on October 30th but after that the rumor starts to spread that had happened I have heard stories from people that say that there were killings on that night and of course the newspaper reports were vastly different in the immediate aftermath there's one I believe the the newspaper from Mount Vernon says that there were five or six African Americans killed and the New York Times article says that there may have been one African American that was killed but of course that was not the case and through the years the story has of course changed and shifted depending on who's telling it and I have heard rumors that there was a lynching based on what we know from you know the testimonies and the contemporary newspaper reports there was nothing like that that happened so in 1920 there are only three african-americans left in Corbin there's Emma Woods the matron of the depot a boarder that lives with her Steve Stansbury and a man named John Berry who was a servant for a wealthy white family in town most of the time with with things like this with racial cleansing 'z with lynchings the parties are never apprehended it's always parties unknown the Commission on interracial cooperation is an important player in this the first state director of the Commission is James Bond who was an African American World War one veteran and the Commission has started in Atlanta in 1919 really in the in the midst of red summer to improve race relations in the south one of the members of the Commission is the Commonwealth's Attorney for Whitley County his name was JB Schneider and he played a pretty large role in bringing this case to trial and prosecuting the members of the mob and the lmn was still under control of the u.s. railroad administration at this point so again in the governor's files that are in Frankfort you see this correspondence between Snyder between the attorney for the lnn trying to figure out you know how can we prosecute these people for what happened in Corbin JB Snyder the Commonwealth's Attorney is really the one that brings the indictments in Williamsburg the county seat of Whitley County against Pistol Pete Steve Rogers and multiple other members of the mob and that's how we get these testimonies from both white and black residents of Corbin that were there on that night what they saw what they experienced all of this comes out in the investigation in September of 1920 only Steve Rogers is sent to the State Penitentiary for two years for the charge of Confederation so out of all of this all these indictments that were handed down only the ringleader Pistol Pete went to jail for any amount of time it's also interesting because one year into his sentence a group of over 300 Corbin residents petitioned the governor to either end Rogers a sentence or reduce it in some way and it's really interesting to see what they lay out as the reasoning for first of all the mob itself why it was necessary to expel all of these african-americans and they say that it was because they were lawbreakers basically they were they use words like they were gregarious and acts lawless in deeds a mighty host of Colored lawbreakers all of this is spelled out in this petition if you look at the Corbin Times newspapers for the weeks leading up there are crimes being committed but in large parts are being done by white people and they close it by saying that the fact that this expulsion was carried out in such an orderly manner without excessive violence reveals that really the whole community thought that it was necessary and that you know this was just something that Corbin one had done it one of these african-americans out and over 300 people signed it but we know that not everybody in the community agreed with this because on the night of the expulsion white korbinites that tried to shelter African Americans from this and tried to stop the mob in several cases but were prevented from doing so either by the chief of police or by the members of the mob themselves basically saying to get out of the way and don't get hurt Corbin builds on this in many ways you know the act itself lasts one night but the effects of it last for decades and it I think it's because the story itself becomes something that people sort of harness and tell to each other tell to their family members tell certainly to african-americans that are traveling through Corbin to you know not stay you're not welcome here kind of thing being willing to talk about it and to put this out in the open I think it's important and to really tell the honest history of what happened putting these sources out there and having people read them and talking about it and being honest about it about what actually happened is maybe a way to to move forward and I think that doing what the sunup initiative is doing with their these giant placards basically of this testimony out there where people can read it on the 100th anniversary of the racial cleansing that occurred in Corbin a group of community members and students from the University of Kentucky banded together to commemorate the event and shed light on the tragedies that happened the people of Corbin hoped to become a sunup rather than a sundown town [Music] you

Channel: Black in Appalachia

Views: 13,881

Keywords: black in Appalachia, African american history, black history, east tennessee pbs, etpbs, Appalachia, Appalachian, Matt O'Neal, UGA, University of Georgia, Whitley County, Eastern Kentucky, Coal mining, L&N Railroad, Ethnic cleansing, Red Summer, Terrorism, lynching, Corbin, Kentucky, SE KY

Id: TNydvshLlgU

Length: 15min 5sec (905 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 29 2020