Judges, money, guns fuel Trump revolt in 2016
Back in 1978, rock singer Warren Zevon sang about “lawyers, guns and money.”
Brad Todd and Selena Zito have written an analysis of the 2016 election that shows swing voters were motivated by the same trio of interests.
In “The Great Revolt“(Crown Forum 2018), Todd and Zito interviewed and surveyed swing voters in the Rust Belt and found that these voters were largely motivated by money, guns and judges.
There is a Memphis connection to this book. Brad Todd is a graduate of Rhodes College, where he majored in political science. He has worked with numerous campaigns throughout Tennessee.
Selena Zito is the journalist who coined the phrase: “Trump’s supporters take him seriously but not literally, while the media takes him literally, but not seriously.” It is still a valid insight. The book is based on both interviews and survey data from the counties in the Rust Belt that switched from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016.
Three counties flipped in Pennsylvania, 12 in Michigan, 22 in Wisconsin, 10 in Ohio, and 31 in Iowa. Those counties, in turn, flipped their states. And those states flipped the Electoral College.
Money is always a factor. As James Carville said during Bill Clinton’s first campaign: “It’s the econo-
lynching took place in another Mississippi county.” The results of her investigation would later be published by the university.
Burke uncovered a connection to Tyrone Higginbottom through a DNA match to the subject of her probe, Elwood Higginbotham. She contacted Tyrone by email. Tyrone said, “At first I thought this might be some sort of scam, trying to take advantage of me because I was looking for information about relatives. And I was suspicious because it wasn’t the same last name, … ‘botham not … ‘bottom.” But he went ahead and correspond by email with Burke.
Missing history
As her work progressed on the Higginbotham case, Burke collaborated with The William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation — then associated with the University of Mississippi in Oxford — and with the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) in Montgomery, Ala. EJI was also working on case studies of more than 4,000 lynchings that took place in the South between the end of Reconstruction in 1877, up to the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950’s.
In April 2017 Burke traveled to Oxford to present her pre-published findings on the Elwood Higginbotham case to the William Winter Institute and to do further records research at the county courthouse and elsewhere.
“I really wanted to meet with Tyrone, but hadn’t heard a thing back from him,” Burke said. “Then, at the last minute the day before I was to go back to Boston he called me and agreed to meet. We met at the main library in Memphis and then went to a McDonald’s to talk about what I had learned about his grandfather, Elwood Higginbotham.”
Tyrone said, “Kylee showed me all the information she had about my grandfather, Elwood. She left a whole package of information ... to share with his family.”
What she told Tyrone cleared up much of the mystery. He learned that the family fled Oxford after the lynching of his grandfather Elwood. The story, far from being one lost to history, actually rose to national prominence at the time. And, the lynching occurred within the lifetime of people alive today, including Tyrone’s uncle E.W. Higginbottom, the brother of his dad and the current pastor of New Abundant Life Missionary Baptist Church in Memphis.
E.W.’s mother and his two other siblings, including Tyrone’s father, Willie Wade, fled Oxford after the lynching. But since E.W. was only 4 years old at the time (he is now 87) he had almost no recollection of what happened. E.W. Higginbottom is the only surviving member of Elwood’s direct family.
Judge and jury
Burke’s narrative recounts the events in Mississippi, 1935. A condensed version follows:
Elwood Higginbotham was a sharecropper living with his wife and three small children on a farm in Oxford. A neighbor, Glen Roberts, and Higginbotham clashed verbally in a dispute over land that Higginbotham was working. At the time Higginbotham was actively involved in organizing a local branch of a sharecroppers union, which locals suspected of being affiliated with the Communist Party. An argument took place between Higginbotham and Roberts. Roberts left, but returned later with several other men to confront Higginbotham.
From this point, according to Kyleen Burke, there were conflicting accounts of what happened next. Local newspapers tended to advance a version where Higginbotham was the provocateur, but others, especially, African-American newspapers and The Daily Worker of New York, a pro-labor Communist affiliated newspaper, portrayed Higginbotham as having been provoked and only protecting his family and home from danger.
Whichever is the case, Higginbotham shot and killed Roberts and immediately thereafter went on the lam. According to Burke’s writing, he was located and captured two days later in a swamp about 25 miles from his home after a manhunt involving 150 men. He was brought to Jackson, Miss., and held from May 23, until his trial in Oxford in September. While in custody, Higginbotham signed a confession to the killing but later pled self defense.
The prosecuting district attorney was quoted as saying, “The negro is the vindictive type,” and “we have a clear cut case of cold blooded murder.”
Burke states in her account of events: Higginbotham’s trial “started and ended quickly. The prosecution and defense attorneys agreed to make only short statements to the jury” and evidence was “limited to testimony from the sheriff, Higginbotham’s wife, and the defendant.” Higginbotham’s fate was in the hands of the jury by the evening of the first and only day of the trial, Sept. 17, 1935. “Judge Taylor McElroy instructed the jury to consider whether Higginbotham was justified in killing,”
“Rumors that the jury would find for Higginbotham began to circulate…” outside the courthouse, a mob gathered around the jail talking about lynching the prisoner.
Then, 50 men “forced their way into the jailer’s office and demanded the cell keys. The sheriff is said to have arrived just as the mob was leaving with the prisoner” but was “overpowered. The lynch mob drove Higginbotham twoand-a-half miles north to a wooded area” (picking up rabble-rousers along the way until the crowd reached 100-150 in size).
(Elwood was) “jerked to his feet and left dangling in the air as several members of the mob had fired into his body. His body was abandoned to hang in a tree. The jury had still been deliberating Higginbotham’s guilt when the news of the lynching made it back to the courtroom.”
A headline in New York’s Amsterdam News, a black newspaper, read: “Mississippi Man Lynched While Jury Weighs: Man Lynched While Jurors Debate Fate.”
At the time of his lynching, Elwood Higginbotham was the 19th lynching victim that year, 1935.
In Washington D.C., the NAACP later used the case to press President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration and Congress for federal anti-lynching legislation. The legislation, known as the Costigan-Wagner bill, died after it was filibustered by Southern senators.
A tree near Oxford
In recognition of Burke’s new findings, the William Winter Institute pushed forward in promoting local awareness of this and seven other lynchings that had occurred in Lafayette County. After locating the original lynching site and the location of Elwood’s unmarked burial place, they contacted Tyrone and other members of the Higginbottom family. They also coordinated with the Equal Justice Initiative, The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Ala., in planning a commemorative event.
On March 24, 2018, more than a dozen Higginbottom family members traveled to Oxford at the invitation of the Winter Institute, and visited — for many the first time — the site of the hanging. There were four generations represented, from Elwood Higginbotham’s son to several of his great-grandchildren.
Several community members also attended. There was a ceremony that opened with a reading by April Grayson, representing the Winter Institute. That was followed by Elwood’s granddaughter Delois Wright singing a spiritual.
Then all family members, including great-grandchildren, thrust a spade into the ground in front of a large old-growth oak tree. That ground could have been the very ground onto which Elwood’s blood dripped more that 82 years earlier. Taking a spade full of earth, each placed it in a large jar which would be sent to National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery.
It was an emotional experience, but one filled with pride for family members.
“Coming here it was like being able to bury my grandfather for the first time by his family; not a real funeral but like a funeral or memorial,” said Elwood’s granddaughter, Tina Higginbottom Washington, a Memphis school teacher with three children.
“I wanted to be here because I have pride in my family, and this is something people think you want to live down, but it (the experience of visiting the site) kind of lifted me up. I’m proud to know that my grandfather was trying to help the African-American sharecroppers. I think of him like a Ceasar Chavez, who I teach about in my class.”
Chavez, head of the United Farm Workers, successfully organized farm workers in California and gained union contracts from industrial-farm ownership.
April Grayson, a director of the Winter Institute said the organization is planning to have a historical marker placed at the lynching site in the future.
A pillar in Montgomery
On April 26, this year, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened in Montgomery. It presents itself as the first memorial dedicated to the enslavement, terrorization and lynching of African-Americans.
Among the features of the memorial are a multi-level gallery in which large pillars are suspended from the ceiling. As one walks through the lowest level and pillars are viewed from below, the realization comes to the viewer that they represent bodies hung as though lynched.
Each pillar represents a county within a state and carries the names (if known) and lynching dates of victims from that county. The pillar for Lafayette County, Miss., has emblazoned onto it the seven victims to suffer lynching in that county. Elwood Higginbotham is the last one listed.
Looking up at that pillar, transfixed by its stark reality, Elwood’s son, E.W. said, “This is the most time I have spent with my father since I was four years old.”
Tyrone expressed a similar emotion, saying, “As I looked up I felt like my grandfather was saying to me: I want you to remember me.”
Inside the museum there stands the glass vessel of soil collected a month earlier at Elwood’s lynching site. It stands with dozens of others that were collected from other lynching sites around the South.
As the Bible says: “By the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” And in this soil, Elwood Higginbotham’s life and death will be remembered for future generations.
Edward Connolly is a freelance journalist living in the Adirondack region of New York State. He can be reached at Connolly@journalist.com
Kyleen Burke’s study of the Elwood Higginbotham’s final days and lynching will be published under the Title: “Elwood Higginbotham: Uncovering the Story of ‘The Hero of the Sharecroppers‘”.