Life of a Klansman by Edward Ball

Author:Edward Ball
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

15

I do not know with certainty whether Constant Lecorgne is among the marauders, but I believe he is. The membership in a fire company, the alarm calling all firemen. Yet the newspapers publish no lists of killers. There is no honor roll of volunteers who claim to have joined in the attack that historians refer to as the Mechanics Institute Riot. And I have no photographs or letters about the day. Still, the preponderant clues say that Constant is in the streets with the other firemen, who help the police to kill dozens of black people. I cannot escape the conclusion that the Mechanics Institute massacre is a blood baptism for him.

Lines of police appear, spilling out from their stations and marching in columns toward Mechanics Hall. The police wear regulation hats with badge numbers on them, each officer’s number sewn onto a hatband. Witnesses notice that the badge numbers are reversed, turned upside down, and unreadable.

One witness says, “A fire company came down with their fire apparatus as if they were running to a fire, which is a very good way to collect a crowd, and headed to the front of the Mechanics Institute.” After the alarm, armed men swarm the downtown streets. They wear different insignia, depending. A witness describes men “with a kind of blue badge or ribbon in the buttonhole of their coats”—the deputized police of Henry Hayes. Others wear a white handkerchief at the neck—rank and file in the fire companies. Men with a single rolled-up shirtsleeve are ex-rebel militia belonging to neither the police nor a firehouse. I think of them as freelancers for white rule.

In front of the Institute, a white newsboy taunts the black demonstrators and starts a fight with one of the black men. A dozen others get ready to join a brawl. A marcher fires a shot, and the fight with the newsboy spreads. At this, a number of police pull their guns and open fire on the men and women in the parade. The shooting begins, and it is general. The beating of men and women starts, and it, too, is general. Knives are brought out by whites not fortunate enough to possess a pistol.

The crowd of blacks in front of the building is attacked, charged from both ends of the street. There is no direction to retreat, and the crowd divides itself into two groups to face the twin assault. Hundreds of whites are armed, only a few blacks have guns. The marchers from the parade, caught in crossfire, fight back with sticks and stones. According to witnesses, the police and firemen act together. A survivor named James Thomas reports, “After the alarm I saw squads from all the fire companies with clubs and sticks. If the police could not kill all those at the convention, the plan was that they were to disperse them, and those they could not kill, the firemen were to kill outside.”

Police and others shoot many to death at point-blank. They chase people down alleys and into nearby houses.

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