Book revisits injustice of man’s hanging
Deep dive details path to posthumous pardon of John Snowden, a Black Annapolitan accused of killing a pregnant white woman
Twenty years after Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening posthumously pardoned John Snowden, a Black Annapolitan hanged a century ago for the murder of a white woman, a new book details the faulty case and trial and Snowden’s pardon years later.
Author and historian Scott Seligman’s latest narrative nonfiction book, “A Second Reckoning: Race, Injustice, and the Last Hanging in Annapolis,” released Oct. 1, uses historical court records, newspaper coverage in the Evening Capital in 1917, and interviews with living relatives to tell the story of John Snowden’s legal journey, his descendants’ fight for justice in his name, and Maryland’s reevaluation of unjust judicial processes in the Jim Crow era.
Seligman dives deep into the death of Lottie May Brandon, the wife of a stenographer for the U.S. Naval Engineering Experiment Station in Annapolis who was found slain in her Annapolis home on Lafayette Avenue on Aug. 8, 1917. She was 24 and pregnant when she was killed.
Annapolis police didn’t have a detective squad at the time and called in Baltimore police, Seligman said. Authorities didn’t locate a suspect for several days during a period when the editor of Evening Capital, Emma Abbott Gage, was quoted in a Washington Times article as saying, without evidence, that a Black man had committed the crime.
Two Black women who lived across from the Brandons’ house eventually came forward to tell police they saw a Black man leave the Brandons’ home on the day of the killing and pointed to John Snowden, who worked as an iceman.
Snowden never confessed to the killing and was likely tortured during his police interview, Seligman said. Amid concerns that a white mob would remove Snowden from jail and lynch him similar to Henry Davis, who was lynched in 1906 in Annapolis, Snowden’s trial was moved to Towson and heard before an all-white jury. In an eight-day trial the jury was presented with only circumstantial evidence, including results from an autopsy of Lottie May Brandon, conducted after her body was repeatedly transported to different locations, buried and then dug up, that found skin of an African American person under her fingernails.
The jury deliberated for 22 minutes before convicting Snowden of murder. Rape was repeatedly brought up through the trial, even though Snowden was not charged with rape, said Seligman, who reviewed the transcript of the 1917 trial. After the Maryland Court of Appeals agreed with the lower court’s decision, Snowden was sentenced to death and hanged in the Annapolis jailhouse yard in 1919, which is now the Arundel Center on Calvert Street. He was 29 years old.
In his last words before the execution, Snowden asserted his innocence.
“In a few hours from now, I shall step out of time into eternity to pay the penalty of a crime that I am not guilty of. I have been telling the truth ever since I was first arrested, but they tried to make me a liar,” Snowden said in an excerpt included in the book. “I could not leave this world with a lie in my mouth.”
Many in Annapolis viewed Snowden as falsely accused and an innocent victim of “legal lynching,” Seligman said. It was the last execution by hanging in Maryland. Snowden was the first person to receive a posthumous pardon in part because of a racial incident.
Glendening, who governed Maryland from 1995 to 2003, became aware of the effort by Snowden’s descendants to grant him a posthumous pardon when social activist and Alderman Carl Snowden brought it to former Gov. William Donald Schaefer and Glendening’s attention after talking to John Snowden’s brother, Louis. John Snowden’s niece Hazel holds an annual commemoration in her uncle’s memory. Carl Snowden is not related to John Snowden.
“It’s a great book. It really does capture not only what Annapolis was like but how it is today,” Carl Snowden said. “In Annapolis, when there’s an injustice, there’s two types of reactions. You have people who respond to it and you have people who stand by and watch and do nothing. That’s exactly the way it was during John Snowden’s death.”
Pardons are generally silent on guilt or innocence and are not often used, Seligman explained. He’s tallied 175 posthumous pardons granted across the country. But lately, governors have discovered posthumous pardons as a tool to address racial injustices. These pardons are meaningful despite the subjects’ death by sending the message that the prejudicial and racist practices in America’s past will not continue, Seligman said.
“I think to a certain extent it can help restore people’s faith in the justice system if it’s lapsed because it is the justice system basically trying to repent for an error,” Seligman said. “It’s the justice system saying we didn’t do the right thing. We’re going to try to make up for it now.”
In May, Gov. Larry Hogan posthumously pardoned 34 Black victims of lynching in Maryland as a step toward rectifying the killings of residents who were denied due process and subject to racial inequity. The pardoned victims included Howard Cooper, a 15-year-old who was hanged outside the Towson jailhouse by a white mob in 1885.
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam in August issued posthumous pardons to a group of Black men called the Martinsville Seven. They were accused of raping a white woman and convicted by an all-white jury. The men were executed in 1951.
Maryland is also examining the state’s lynching history through a new commission. The Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission plans to hold several hearings throughout the year as part of its research effort. Its goal is to give communities where the killings took place an opportunity to discuss them. The commission will eventually submit a report to the governor and General Assembly with recommendations on how to address the legacy of lynchings that are rooted in restorative justice.
At least 40 Black men were lynched in Maryland from 1850 to 1950 in 18 of the state’s 24 counties.
“I think the country is ready to deal with some of these things,” Seligman said.