The Lynching of Henry 'Peg' Gilbert

george bernard shaw writes about the meeting of the cardinals and bishops and priests to congratulate joan of arc after she has been elevated to sainthood you know 30 minutes to burn her 400 years to recognize her as a saint and when the time comes for joan to speak she looks at all of them and says can you unburn me [Music] that must be [Music] a central question and that's the question that leads to a serious conversation about [Music] reparations [Music] good afternoon i'm tara dunn and i'm representing the civil rights and restorative justice clinic as a second year law school student about a year ago i was handed a folder with the name of henry pay gilbert and i was told to research his story because it was a part of a grander scheme to uncover the true facts of these forgotten travesties of racial violence our project is about 10 years old we examine cases from the jim crow and civil rights era from 1930 to 1970. these are cases homicide cases in which were killed in situations that involved racial violence we have about 500 cases and we believe there are about 2 000 cases ultimately to be collected henry gilbert's case was one of my primary cases there were no police records back then they barely issued warrants there are multiple times where we would call a state agency and they said well these records were lost in a flood or a fire or we just don't have them you know we don't have we have no idea what happened this is a complicated case that can be boiled down to two tragedies the tragic and brutal death of henry peg gilbert and the tragic arrest and trial of gus davidson [Music] henry peg gilbert was a farmer and he worked very hard side by side with his wife may henry gilbert and they saved up for 20 years to buy 111 acres of land which was significant for a black family back then i always will remember my childhood because i had a beautiful childhood because i had a wonderful mother and father who loved us and i felt especially loved because i was the baby his success story indicates that it had great admiration among peers and persons within his own community but it inspired great envy on people across the racial line so to speak they were at church one day and they heard gunshots after the church service [Music] a black man amgust davidson had shot a white farmer named olin sands gus davidson was involved in an accident resulting in the death of a calf that belonged to a white farmer that farmer threatened davidson who then in self-defense fired and shot and killed owen sands mr olympian went to fort gust you know gus just shot him when you hear a shot you know so you know you better get out of the way because you don't know what's going to happen next gus davidson makes his escape and collective guilt was the rule of the day it was a night of terror for the black community white mobs were driving around with guns looking for gus davidson the harris county chief of police showed up on the doorstep of henry p gilbert and arrested him for aiding and betting the fugitive gus davidson we was all in the bed in another room and uh when they knocked on the door my dad went to the door and they said that they'd come to take him to jail and daddy said for what well you just come over there and say well let me get my pants and that's all i remember about that that night they took him to jail he was beaten and tortured at one point henry gilbert's brother-in-law comes to visit him henry says to his brother-in-law through the window of the jail don't worry there's nothing you can do i will never get out of here alive couple days after that his wife may henry gilbert was notified to come pick up her husband's dead body [Music] the injuries that henry gilbert sustained included five gunshot wounds a crushed skull crushed ribs and a broken leg we saw him at the funeral he had broken ribs bruises all in his face broken arm broken leg they just they just beat him to them his face was all bruised and scarred up and everything he looked definitely did when he was living because he always had a smile and everything [Music] a lot of people were scared to come to the funeral when we had my daddy's funeral because that scared the whole community because they figured if they did it to him they would do it to them you know and they know better than to try to say anything against the white man because he's staying on his place after her husband was killed to add uh insult to the enormous injury that had been done to her family she was arrested and held as an accessory after the fact they locked up my mother carter said she was hiding gus davidson because somebody said they saw her cooking for him so he was sitting at the table eating and gus had never been to our house even before this happened because we wasn't just their friends we just knew each other fortunately for her she had a good lawyer white man who protected her from what harris county and troop county wanted to be her fate the chief of harris county police who took the blame for killing henry p gilbert stated that he killed him out of self-defense after this explanation was given there was really a half-hearted investigation none of the forensic evidence supported the police chief chief buchanan's story about how gilbert died in his custody the gilbert's lost their 111 acres of land they had to sell it and they moved away and no justice was served it was rough we just almost had to get a farm away mama had a nervous breakdown so she wasn't able to work for a good while you couldn't hardly talked to about it because she's just in a stage you know that she didn't want to talk about it she had a spell she was shaking and they couldn't get her to stop shaking it and he was brutally and justly murdered because him and my grandmother had the will and the wisdom to build something in a time that because of your color you were not supposed to be able to have this our highlight of our research was actually becoming close with the gilbert family everybody got some traits in it it's also a healing process for them and we got to witness that as law school students you know this family working through this really painful moment together my grandfather henry pegg gilbert just hearing about him is really amazing we've known about it for a while but you had known for my with my mother you would know never to ask about her father my mother had built up a wall and so we were continually talking to her after this she shared more than she normally did but each time there's a little bit more that she's constantly letting down the walls and so i think a lot of her wounds have been healed and now after 70 years she's free to talk about it it's pain and joy all at the same time you know the pain is when i think about what they suffered the joy is you guys enlighten us on what they suffer [Music] what's made clear by the gilman places it doesn't matter how much influence you have in your own community how prominent a citizen you are if the white sheriff thought that you should be eliminated that was possible the gilberts had accumulated a measure of wealth whereas the davidsons were sharecroppers on a plantation in the area gus davidson ran because he knew he would be subjected likely to lynching if he stayed and he managed to escape and to establish a new life for himself in newark new jersey where he worked and supported a family until he was uncovered by the fbi and then returned to georgia to face trial the rumor was that he's the wife that he married to heard him talking in his sleep and she went and told it or something in a way that's how they got in touch with him arrested him and brought him back to jail my very first court experience was to go to the trial of gus davidson sitting in the colored section and looking at people in the white section but the thing that stands out most was the behavior and language of both the prosecutor and his white defense attorney gus davidson's defense attorney used the n-word i think more frequently than the prosecutor sitting there 12 or 13 years old the jury coming back with a verdict of guilty without mercy that was the first verdict and then gus davidson again escaped that fate really through his own brilliance was able to appeal to the governor who ultimately commuted his sentence and ultimately also commuted that life sentence so that he was able to live as a free man at the end of his life a sack full of little pieces of bones that is what may henry davenport gilbert told a journalist she had left after the state of georgia the counties of harris and troop and yes the united states of america had their way with her husband i am honored to take part in this ceremony and acknowledgement the acknowledgment that in [Music] 1947 the criminal justice system failed and those words are hollow and empty if a person's heart is not changed and the darkness in that heart can only be gone if christ is with us as long as you keep our inheritance you can stand up and say you sire okay you sighed what you gonna do outside as long as we don't have what my grandfather and grandmother work so hard for our family tree is still broken as we came here a year ago looking at our gravesite as i looked up onto your rising i noticed that we were being watched by cows and when i got back home i told my mother as we were looking at her father's grave site it looked like the cows was looking at us and she told me the little baby cow came from that farm and walked out into that road and was killed and that's how this whole thing [Music] started there is nothing that can be done to ease the pain and sorrow that my family has suffered he worked hard he served his country and he served his community he served his church you know he was looking for the american dream but the american dream failed him i thought today was amazing i mean to have people 70 years later to actually come out and apologize one regret is i wish my mom was here so that she can actually see it but when i mentioned that her pain is real her pain is still very real this is something that she has suppressed for 70 years the most interesting part about the whole entire situation is that it's so relevant to what's going on today just going through the department of justice paperwork from the fbi and attorney general and being able to see injustice at every single level when they were looking for gus davidson not only henry gilbert was arrested but also the entire davidson family and you had a 11 year old 14 year old along with a mother a couple of the other brothers they were in jail for months at a time with no warrant no hearing no due process and the fbi identified that and nothing was done it just kind of made me make the connection of really what's going on in current day and how it's so important to push for justice in the actual procedural system can you unburn me can you unleash henry peg gilbert and restore the 110 acres of land and cure the heartbreak of a wife a mother and four daughters they were robbed of so much oh i think about my dad all the time not in a sad way you know because i know he was a fine man and i loved him and he loved me but i think about him a lot if you could say anything to your father right now what would it be i'll tell them about living [Music] foreign you

Channel: ABC 7 Chicago

Views: 539,970

Keywords: henry gilbert, henry peg gilbert, georgia lynching, henry gilbert georgia, henry gilbert georgia lynching, henry gilbert death, anti lynching bill 2020, ahmaud arbery, robert fuller, emmett till anti lynching act

Id: PZRvRb4XaK4

Length: 18min 3sec (1083 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 26 2020