MOB, LYNCHING, UNMARKED GRAVE
Activist raising funds to put up marker for George Marshall Clark, murdered in 1861
It took Tyrone MackLee Randle Jr., two days to find it.
The 28-year-old artist and activist, along with two friends, combed Section 17 in the city’s largest and oldest cemetery looking for the final resting place of George Marshall Clark.
In the early morning hours of Sept. 8, 1861, Clark became Milwaukee’s only lynching victim. Clark was hastily buried that day in Forest Home Cemetery, somewhere in Section 17, a grassy knoll now dotted with 200-year-old trees. He was 24 years old, according to cemetery records.
That’s where Randle and his friends searched among a patchwork of graves, some marked by weather-beaten headstones, others unmarked, buried beneath the Earth. They made pencil rubbings to trace barely legible inscriptions, to no avail.
“It never came across our minds that it would be unmarked,” Randle said. “He went
through all the pain and suffering and was just forgotten.”
Randle returned the next day, started in again, and then — with the help of cemetery personnel — found Clark’s grave, not far from where he first started searching.
“It brought me to tears,” said Randle, who describes himself as a spiritual person. He felt an energy wash over him that said: “Fix this.”
For Randle, there was one clear way to do that — place a headstone on Clark’s grave, 160 years after he was first buried. That quest became a shared mission between Randle and Forest Home Cemetery to raise money for a marker.
Through separate fundraising initiatives, they’ve raised $3,500 — $1,100 short of the $4,600 needed for the marker.
Randle set up a GoFundMe page and used social media to raise awareness about Clark’s short life and tragic death. The nonprofit arm of Forest Home Cemetery included the effort in its yearly fundraising initiatives.
They plan to dedicate the new marker on Sept. 8, 2021, the 160th anniversary of Clark’s burial at Forest Home. For now, an ornate shepherd’s hook from Randle’s partner’s yard marks Clark’s grave.
A fight, a mob, and injustice
Randle learned of Clark’s story doing an independent study while attending the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design in 2014-’15.
At the time, he was creating artwork inspired by the victims of police violence. A teacher mentioned, in passing, that a young Black man was lynched in Milwaukee. Randle’s research led to several articles on Clark.
During a protest march last summer following the death of George Floyd, Randle was hit with police shields. As police tried to arrest him, a car ran over him, leaving him with a broken pelvis, three fractured ribs, and a fracture to his spine.
As he recuperated, he remembered Clark’s story. Clark had wanted to be a barber like his father, who was already known in the city’s Black community for his work around voting rights.
On Friday evening, Sept. 6, 1861, Clark and an acquaintance, James P. Shelton, were walking along what is now N. Milwaukee St., just south of the intersection with E. Michigan St. They came upon two white men — one a Muskego farmer, the other an owner of a Third Ward saloon frequented by Irish immigrants.
Words were exchanged and a fight broke out, according to a history written by Kevin Abing, an archivist at the Milwaukee County Historical Society. Some versions suggest two white women were the source of the argument, but subsequent descriptions, including those made by some of the men involved, mention no women.
Shelton knifed both white men, and attacked a third as they were trying to disappear into the night. Police eventually found Clark and Shelton and put them in the county jail, on what is now the north side of Cathedral Square.
Darby Carney, the saloon keeper, named Shelton as his assailant before dying of his stab wounds Saturday evening. A crowd of 300 marched to the jail, overran the police chief, and stormed inside. Clark and Shelton had been moved to a back room, and hearing the approaching mob, Shelton was able to move into a cell adjoining the back room, and close the door. The mob seized Clark; Shelton escaped in the chaos.
Clark, however, was beaten, dragged outside, and taken to a nearby fire station. The crowd argued over whether it had the right man, as Clark — already beaten to the point of being unrecognizable — argued he had not knifed anyone. Eventually, the mob pronounced him guilty, dragged him to the Third Ward, and hanged him on E. Buffalo St., between what is now N. Broadway and N. Water St.
Police re-captured Shelton a few days later. He was tried and acquitted for acting in self-defense, then hustled out of town for his own safety.
The Milwaukee County Historical Society has commissioned a commemorative plaque to place on the site where Clark was lynched.
‘It definitely opened our eyes to the history’
Garen Morris, a memorial counselor at the cemetery, saw Randle searching Section 17 and offered to help.
“We talked a few minutes and he explained a little bit more to me why he was looking for George Marshall Clark,” Morris said.
The cemetery, he noted, is filled with history — from the city’s founders to beer barons to civil war veterans. But hearing of a lynching victim was a first for him.
“It is definitely not the common lookup for us,” Morris said. “You see dysentery, you see influenza. You see all kinds of other stuff. But I can’t say that anybody else I personally looked for just said, ‘They were murdered due to lynching.’ It definitely opened our eyes up to the history … of some of the things that have gone down over time.”
Forest Home was one of the first public cemeteries open to anyone regardless of race, religion, or social class — so Morris was not surprised Clark would have been buried there.
Most cemeteries during that era, he noted, were either for whites only or for people of certain denominations. But he couldn’t say why Clark had no headstone other than the fact that Section 17 is where the city provided some of the burial spaces.
To find Clark’s grave, Morris looked through centuries-old interment records. The leather-bound books list the name of the decedent, place of birth, date of death, and what they died from. The records listed Clark’s cause of death as murder.
Because there was no marker, Morris pulled lot cards with information on graves that did have headstones near Clark’s and then paced out the distance.
“We stepped it off and we found the approximate area,” he said.
The story of Clark has stuck with him.
“This was a man,” he said. “This was a person. He shouldn’t have been judged by anybody for his color.”
Remembering the larger picture
A marker on Clark’s grave is important, said historian Clayborn Benson III, the founder of the Wisconsin Black Historical Society. But it is equally important to note that just like so many Black men lynched in this country, Clark was a victim of a mob’s rage and not necessarily guilty of a crime.
“I think the bigger picture here is lynchings were taking place all over the United States. The purpose of these lynchings (were) to make the African-American community … feel disenfranchised and hated,” Benson said.
“And the end result was that people left in large numbers,” he said. “They went to Madison, Chicago, Racine. But they left Milwaukee. Not everybody, but a lot of people did.”
For Randle, installing the marker is a way for people to understand the long history of racism in this city and state that both still grapple with it today.
“It is important for people to be able to visit,” he said. “People need something tangible in order to wrap their minds around [what happened.] We are not going to heal from that until it is brought to light and acknowledged.”
Randle is working with the Forest Home Historic Preservation Association to design the marker.
“He told us who (Clark) was and his story and because we normally do that kind of work … this is one that we needed to include,” said Sara Tomilin, assistant executive director of the cemetery and director of the preservation association.
The association raises money for the upkeep of the nearly 200-year-old cemetery’s historic monuments, buildings, and grounds. That includes restoring worn markers or installing new ones on previously unmarked graves that have historical significance. Clark fit the bill.
The plan now is for a black granite headstone inscribed with Clark’s name, the symbol used by barbers, and the dedication date.
Randle is adamant that one detail not be on the marker.
“I think it is really important that he is not remembered as a victim but remembered for his place in history,” he said. “I don’t think putting on his headstone that he was lynched is respectful. I don’t think he would want to be remembered that way.”
Instead, Randle wants Clark to be remembered as a loving son, friend, a contributor to society — and to mourn his lost potential.
“Because of his history, his father, and his background, (Clark) could have been a lot more for the Black community had he lived,” Randle said. “His impact would have been a lot greater in life than it is in death.”
The Forest Home Historic Preservation Association is accepting donations for the Clark Monument. Call (414) 645-2632 for more information.