The Assault on Elisha Green by Randolph Paul Runyon

Author:Randolph Paul Runyon [Runyon, Randolph Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780813152387
Publisher: UP of Kentucky
Published: 2021-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Said I [Green, referring to himself]: “So far as nigger is concerned I do not like that; but negro, I am proud of it.”46

Given the weakness of his case, Ward thought he had to belittle the plaintiff with racist remarks and make a mockery of Green’s going to court at all. But for twelve years now blacks had been permitted to testify in criminal cases against whites, and in Kentucky and other southern states they had been suing whites in civil cases since 1865. “African Americans,” writes Melissa Milewski in a study of eight states, including Kentucky, “not only litigated civil cases against whites in the highest level of Southern courts; they often won these cases.” So there was no legal justification for Ward’s telling Green it was wrong for him to go to law, though there was perhaps a social one. Lockhart, Green recalled, countered: “Judge, Your Honor, Gentlemen of the Jury: I am a lawyer and sworn to enforce the law. I intend to do it irrespective of race, color or previous condition of servitude. My opponent, all he has done is to make fun of Uncle Elisha, but he can’t laugh this thing out of court.”47

The defense won a small victory when Green was caught in a mistake about which hat he had been wearing on the train. He brought a black slouch hat to court, but several witnesses testified that he had been wearing a brown straw hat at the time. Lockhart in his address to the jury acknowledged the error, which in the end did not jeopardize Green’s case.

The jurymen were not so dazzled by the beauty of Gould’s young ladies or moved by Ward’s appeal to white supremacy as to deny Green any semblance of justice. They ruled in his favor, finding Gould and Bristow guilty, while absolving Corrington. But actual damages were another matter. Green had asked for $1,000 but in the end was awarded only $12.50 each from Gould and Bristow. The Paris Kentuckian printed the names of the jurors, whether they were from the town or the county, and how they initially voted before the compromise figure was reached. The ten from the county had voted for only one cent in damages; of the two from Paris, one was for $25, and the other for $500.48

In addition to damages, Gould and Bristow had to pay $15 each for Green’s court costs. The combined sum of $27.50 from each would be the equivalent of about $800 today, a not insignificant figure.49

Bristow threatened to sue Green for perjury for swearing to the wrong hat but does not appear to have done so.50

Elisha Green did not have much time to savor his victory before he was devastated by terrible news. On March 29, 1884, his son Thomas was killed by a stray bullet during a civil disturbance in Cincinnati. A mob of 10,000 people, enraged that a murderer had been convicted only of manslaughter, had resolved to lynch him. They attacked the city jail, unaware that their intended victim had already been removed to a safe location out of the city.

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