Lynching defied Supreme authority
Preparation has begun at the south end of the Walnut Street Bridge for the construction of a memorial to Ed Johnson, now acknowledged as a man lynched in 1906 for a crime he did not commit.
And yet his death occurred after the United States Supreme Court ruled: “… it is ordered by the court that an appeal from the Circuit Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Tennessee be … allowed and that all proceedings against the appellant be stayed … .” Since Constitution Week is celebrated Sept. 17-23, it seems appropriate to examine the first criminal case to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The trial against Ed Johnson was based on accusations without evidence and desire for a speedy arrest, trial and execution. Nevada Taylor reported being strangled with a black leather strap and raped on Jan. 23, 1906, near her home on the grounds of Forest Hills Cemetery. Unable to identify her assailant other than he wore a black slouch hat and coat, Hamilton County Sheriff Joseph F.
Shipp offered a reward for information that would lead to the arrest and conviction of the rapist. After increasing the reward to $375, a young employee of the Chattanooga Medicine Company stepped forward and claimed to have seen Ed Johnson on the evening of Jan. 23, holding a dark leather strap near Taylor’s route home. Johnson was arrested immediately. He proclaimed his innocence, but within hours, a mob had gathered outside the Hamilton County Jail, demanding that he be “hanged.”
At 9 a.m. on Feb. 6, the trial convened with Johnson’s attorneys having only been appointed nine days earlier. The judge informed them that there would be no delay and no change of venue. Twelve white, male jurors were seated. After three days of testimony during which Johnson again maintained his innocence, the jury began deliberation. At 9 a.m. on the fourth day, jurors announced their verdict: “On the single count of rape, we, the jury, find the defendant, Ed Johnson, guilty.” Johnson’s execution was scheduled for March 13.
Lewis Shephard, one of Johnson’s attorneys who had been in contact with Noah Parden, the leading African American attorney in Chattanooga, pushed for appeal, urging Parden and his partner, Styles Hutchins, to take the lead. Parden and Hutchins, invoking the Habeas Corpus Act of 1867 by citing procedural problems including a violation of the “trial by a jury of one’s peers,” appealed to the U.S. District Court in Knoxville. On March 11, the judge issued a 10-day stay. A conflict arose over the issue of federal intervention in a criminal case, traditionally state court jurisdiction. Tennessee Gov. John Cox agreed to a seven-day stay, and Parden and Hutchins began a quick search for an attorney with standing to present Johnson’s case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Washington, D.C., attorney Emanuel D. Hewlett, a prominent African American graduate of Boston University School of Law, agreed to join the cause.
Parden and Hutchins filed a brief on March 16, and Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan, who heard emergency appeals for the 6th District, asked them to appear before him the next day. Parden, joined by Hewlett, received a 10-minute audience with the acclaimed jurist and, on March 18, Harlan telegraphed the district court in Knoxville and Sheriff Shipp in Chattanooga, announcing a stay of execution, allowing Johnson’s attorneys to file a petition to the Supreme Court. Within hours, Ed Johnson was lynched by an angry mob. He again maintained his innocence while forgiving his executioners.
Johnson’s lynching made the front page of the major national newspapers. The Supreme Court justices gathered, noting that “the mandate of the Court has for the first time in the history of the country been openly defied by a community.” Secret Service agents were sent to Chattanooga to arrest Shipp and others to stand charge for “contempt of Court.” On May 28, based on evidence collected by the agents, Shipp and 24 Chattanoogans were arrested. The sheriff asserted that the court, by intervening, ”was responsible for the lynching.”
After a lengthy trial ending in November 1909, Shipp and two others were sentenced to 90 days in prison; three co-defendants received 60-day sentences. Released early on Jan. 29, 1910, Shipp returned to Chattanooga, where more than 10,000 citizens turned out to greet him.
United States v. Shipp, the only time the high court conducted a criminal trial, remains a footnote in constitutional history.