The Tolliver Incident

The Tolliver Incident

My name is Jake Wade.  I’m a professional free-lance writer, and I hope you’ll pick up my latest book, “Lynching in America”, when its released later this autumn.  I sold the concept to my publisher, and used the advance to research and write the book.  It’s a pretty good book, but there was one portion that won’t be making it into print.  My editor Nancy Bingham (bless her), and the publisher thought this story just didn’t fit into the book.  They were probably correct; as they have been on every editorial decision made since I first started with them fifteen years ago. 

It became evident early in my research that very few women were lynched in 20th century America.  That made it important to include at least one chapter digging into the details of a lynching where a woman was the victim.  The case I first chose first to focus on was the lynching of Amenity Wittlesy on the fourth of November 1948.  The location was a little town named Tolliver in western Georgia.  I went to Tolliver looking for details to flesh out the story.

Tolliver is a nice town that might have stood in for Mayberry.  There was the obligatory statue of a Confederate Soldier in the center of town, and the place appeared quiet, but prosperous.  I checked in at the Tolliver House, and with the local paper, The Sentinel.  Today the town boasts of a population of around 18,000, and its boosters make it out to be a slice of Paradise.  In 1948, Tolliver was a dying town with maybe 3,000 people.  The backbreaking labor of tenant farming supplemented by work in the turpentine refinery drove most of the younger people away to better opportunities up North, or over in Atlanta.  Then there was the war.  Somehow in the fifty years since, the town has managed to turn things around.  Its almost like the town acquired a guardian angel.

The first order of business, as always, was to study the police records of the crime.  I set up an appointment with the Town Constable, and we met in his office after breakfast.  Constable Miller understood what I was looking for, and soon had a small pile of files ready for me to study.  “Otis, come show the man to our interview room to look at these files.”  Otis turned out to be a tall gawky black man, who offered me coffee before leaving me to my reading.  I don’t know how good a deputy Otis might have been, but he made the best cup of coffee I ever had in a police station. 

On the night of November 4th, 1948, an anonymous telephone call to the State Police reported a lynching was taking place in Tolliver.  When the State Police arrived at 11:30, the crime had already been done and the crowd dispersed.  A noose was found hanging from a tree in the front yard.  A bloody ax and a large quantity of blood were found nearby.  The house was still in flames, and burned until 6 a.m. the next morning.  Inside the ruins arson investigators found a headless corpse.  Any evidence that might have been in the house was  consumed in the fire.  The head was never recovered.  The files contained a number of black and white photographs documenting the crime scene, but the photographs gave no clue as to what had happened.  The investigators believed Amenity Wittlesy was dragged from her house, and hung from the tree where the noose was found.  It was impossible to tell whether she was still alive when she was decapitated and dragged back into the house.  No witnesses willing to testify were ever located.  Questioned by investigators, Town Constable Jackson declared he was having dinner with this daughter 75 miles away.  The daughter confirmed the Constable’s presence, and since there was no evidence that he was complicit in the crime, no action was taken against him.  Jackson continued to serve as Town Constable until his death in an automobile collision in 1959.  No additional progress was reported on the case since it was closed by exception in 1949.

Locating witnesses was going to be a challenge, but I’m used to challenging research.  The local paper wasn’t much help.  I spent a couple of days at the Capital going through dusty records.  It was hard boring work, but after two weeks I’d compiled a list of 13 individuals who were still alive and living in the area. 

Finally, I was able to begin interviewing people, the most enjoyable part of my work.  Five of my subjects lived at the County Rest Home, so that was my first stop.  Unfortunately, four of the five suffered from Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s disease and were a dead-end.  The fifth was an man named Nate Richardson who had run the general store in '48.  His memory was clear, and he was starved for someone to talk with.  Here is a partial transcript of the taped interview:

JW:  What can you tell me about Amenity Wittlesy?
NR: Well son, I knew her as well as anyone in town.  I was there the day she arrived.  It was in late August, or early October 1948, just after the war.  Lost a lot of good kids in that one.  Little Jimmy Hollis who used to come into my General Store for candy got killed by those damned Japs somewhere out in the Pacific.  I don’t think even half the boys who left ever came home again (long pause, then undecipherable mumbling…)

JW: You were saying about Ms. Wittlesy….
NR:  Who?  Oh, that woman.  Yes, her car stalled at a stop sign and was pronounced dead on arrival by Roy down at the Standard Station.  (A brittle laugh, ending in a dry cough).  The Wittlesy woman came into my store asking about houses for sale within walking distance of town.  That got a laugh from the regulars, though there weren’t many around any more.  Did I tell you about how everyone just up and left to work up there in Atlanta?  (long pause)  Anyway, the woman ended up buying the Shepard place for cash money.  She seemed to have a lot of that, probably from the Black Market during the war.  Can’t trust a Yankee.  Say, you aren’t a Yankee, are you son? 

JW:  Do you know where she came from?
NR:  Story was she came from Danvers, Massachusetts in a 1938 Hudson.  Damned Yankee never fit in with the folks around Tolliver.  Kept to herself, her and her tomcat.  Now that yellowed-eyed grey devil was the terror of the town.  Killed, or ran off, every other cat for miles around.  When folks asked Miz Wittlesy to do something, she just laughed and laughed. 

JW:  If folks didn’t like her for being a Yankee, how did they take to her being black?
NR:  What?  What did you say?  Amenity Wittlesy wasn’t black or Old Jonesy would never have sold her the Shepard place.  Where did you get the notion she was a nigger, boy?

JW:  Well, can you describe her for me?
NR:  Sure, she was a striking woman; had long red hair.  She was the whitest person I ever knew, but not one of them… what you call’ems… a … a pigmy, no … a … a albito.  That’s it, albino.  She just never liked to come out during the day; liked to lay-up in the cool of her house.  When she came out she was always wearing a hat, and dark glasses like some movie star.  When she took the glasses off, her eyes appeared dark at first, but then you could see they were really a deep dark, blue with just pinpoint centers.  Striking woman, but never did fit into the community.

JW: Why did they lynch her?  Did you see it?
NR: Me!  Oh no, I wasn’t there for that.  Gracious, no.  I had gone to visit my son George down in Atlanta.  I don’t know why that all happened, Amenity always paid cash and was nice to me.

At this point Mr. Richardson seemed to drift off and within moments was snoring quietly.  I left determined to return to learn more.  Imagine that.  Women victims of lynch mobs are rare, but to find a case where the victim was both a woman and white was a sensational find.  I thought, with dollar signs dancing in my head, might even be a separate book in this one.  Since my publisher chose use a different chapter about women being lynched, that has become a strong possibility if I can get an advance.

I returned the following day, but was told that Mr. Richardson had died in his sleep.  That made one less informant.  I checked with Massachusetts’s public records, but could find no record of a Amenity Wittlesy between 1900 and 1948.  The next person on my list had be crossed off  when she suddenly decided to visit her Great-grandchildren in Denver. 

Two of those who lived in Tolliver at the time of the lynching were a married couple. Mr. and Mrs. Gates invited me onto their porch for lemonade, but said they couldn’t be much help.  I asked them if they knew any of the people who were in the lynch mob.  They exchanged glances, but hesitantly admitted they knew most of those who had lynched Amenity Wittlesy.  Not very surprisingly, they declined to name any names.  I asked if they could help me understand why it was a Tolliver mob would lynch a white woman.  The welcome mat no longer seemed to be out.  Mrs. Gates suddenly had chores to do inside the house.  Mr. Gates' mouth clamped shut and his interest shifted to the porch ceiling.  Mr. Gates followed me to the rental car, and leaning down into the open window said, “You need to understand that things around here in Tolliver were very, very bad during the autumn of 1948.  More misfortune than the town deserved. People just don’t want to think about all that, talking about it ain’t something we do around here.”  He nervously stepped back clearly unwilling to say more.

That night I didn’t sleep well.  What was happening in Tolliver back in 1948?  The next morning, I rode out to see an another potential witness.  Thomas Hatten, who seemed to be regarded as a leading spokesman for the Black community, was a lay preacher at the Baptist Church.  Here is the tape transcript of that interview:

JW:  I understand that there were a lot of bad things happening around here back in the Fall of 1948.  Could you tell me anything about that?
TH:  They was hard times.  No work, and so many of the young ones never came home from the war.  The harvest that year was poor, and didn’t anything seem to go right; ugly animals got born.  They was a measles epidemic here, killed some of the kids around Halloween in ’48.  The White folks was being pinched, and that made things awful rough for us; just when we was hoping things would get better.  We had our church, and was used to bad times though.  Some of the Whites in town was looking for someone to blame, so we stayed clear.  Kept our kids close to home. 

JW:  The towns’ people blamed Amenity Wittlesy for their misfortunes?  Why was that?
TH:  They thought she was a’witching them.  A lot of bad things happened in Tolliver after she came here.  A bunch of White folks were out to see Mammy Marie to get charms to protect them from all the bad things happening.

JW:  Mammy Marie?  Who’s she?
TH:  I done said too much.

I had a Marie Maytree on my list to be interviewed, and she went immediately to the top of the list.  Finding her was another problem.  Either no one seemed to know where she might be found, or the directions were so complex as to be worthless.  Persistence pays off, and I finally met with Marie Maytree in her home on a neglected half-acre outside of town.

As I approached the sagging porch, a battle-scarred tomcat of immense proportions barred my way.  I paused at his threatening howl, and a dim shape appeared behind the screen door.  “I know you, you’re that writer fellow come to stir up trouble about Amenity.  Who sent you?  Did Opal send you down here to work her business?”  Of course, I denied knowing anyone named Opal and explained I was researching a book titled “Lynching in America”.  I asked if I had found the home of Marie Maytree.  The screen door opened to reveal a tiny woman who stepped out onto the porch.

“I’m Marie Maytree, but don’t you go calling me that.  You call me Mammy Marie, like everyone else around here.”  She turned and mumbled something indistinguishable to her grey cat, and it promptly disappeared into the weeds at the end of the gallery.  “Well, since you’re here, come on into the house.  Did you bring me any cigarettes, or whiskey, by any chance?” 

After the bright morning sun, it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the filtered light of her parlor.  It was a nice room, with doilies over the back of easy chairs flanking a polished table.  There were lace curtains covering the windows, and a very striking antique photograph on the wall.  I stepped closer and saw a woman who might have been my hostess.  “That’s my grandma… taken when she got her freedom after the war.  She was named Marie, just like me.  Sold up here to Mr. Tolliver as a house slave from Louisiana.”  I commented on how interesting that all was, and she asked if I’d like a cup of tea. 

We stepped into her kitchen.  It was a dark room smelling of savory herbs and exotic spices.  Only a weak light shone through the kitchen door and narrow window.  There was a dull reddish gleam from an ancient wood stove.  The room was too warm, too close and almost uncomfortable.  “No electricity, or modern conveniences out here”, she commented indicating a rickety chair for me to sit in. She poured my tea into a monogrammed Wedgwood china cup.  I asked if she could answer a few questions about the murder of Amenity Wittlesy.

“She wasn’t murdered, Mister, she was lynched by the folks around here for all the trouble she caused.” 

When I asked what trouble that was, she replied, “She sold charms to the wrong folks, and they all got upset when troubles followed.” 

“I understand that many of the folks around here come to you to buy charms.  Is that right?  Why is it that they would lynch Amenity Wittlesy and not you as well?”

“I don’t truck with the darkness; Only the Light, honey; only the Light.  My charms are strong.  Would you be interested in something to make your fortune, huh?”  She had a grin on her face that might have meant anything at all.  “I tried to be her friend, to warn her about meddling in things, but she wouldn’t listen to an old black woman.  Her and her fancy Yankee ways.”  Now she was laughing, “You know there’s no such thing as magic, don’t you young man?” 

I switched approaches and asked if she could tell me anything about the night Amenity was lynched, and was surprised when she admitted being a witness.  She refused to identify any of the lynch mob.  Here is her story.

“I knew something was going to happen.  It was in the air for weeks, even before Halloween, I knew.  The Richardson boy died of measles on Halloween, and there was talk about Amenity being to blame for all the troubles that autumn.  I was there, but no one saw me.  They came down the street carrying torches. It was the whole town, but so silent all I could hear were their footsteps.  They surrounded the house, and broke down the doors.  Amenity was dragged out, and her cat was kicked away.  First they hanged her from the Acacia tree until she stopped struggling, then they all cheered.  Someone untied the rope, and when she hit the ground she began to moan and curse the town.  One of the men cut off her head with an ax, it took several cuts to do the job.  There was a lot of blood, and someone kicked Amenity’s head.  She, It, began to scream.  She cursed the town and everyone in it.  It cursed them to miserable, untimely deaths, and warned them of the Opal’s vengeance to come.  That scared them good.  They dragged the body back inside the house, sprinkled gasoline around and set the place ablaze.  “She died three times, and that put an end to her. Then they all went home to their comfortable beds.” We sat there in silence for a moment, “I ain’t afraid of no curse, but some of them should have been.” 

I couldn’t stand sitting in that kitchen any longer, so I thanked Mammy Marie, and got up to leave.  “Next time, you bring old Mammy a carton of cigarettes, hear?  You'll be back next year; don't forget the cigarettes.”  I turned and for the first time noticed that the yellow-eyed cat was staring down on us from a shelf.  On the same shelf was a human skull.

Outside, I rewound the tape.  With any luck at all, I had enough to make the whole book a best seller.  The tape was blank, so all I had was my recollection of a conversation un-witnessed except by a cat.  When the last of my potential informants wouldn’t even talk to me, I knew I had hit a dead-end.  So when you pick up “Lynching in America” you won’t find this story.  What happened in Tolliver still isn't clear, but it will be if I can only get an advance on my next book.