Title
Lynching of Rubin Stacy
Creator
N.A.A.C.P.
Description
On July 16th, 1935 an unidentified black man knocked on the door of the home of Marion Jones of Ft. Lauderdale and asked for a drink. When she let him in, he threatened her with a penknife. She screamed until he ran off and her 5-year-old son ran for help. Two days later, local law enforcement arrested Reuben Stacey because a passing driver had reported him as “suspicious looking.” When asked why he had run from the arresting officer Stacey replied, “Well, I just can’t stand it. You know how Negroes are. They just can’t stand for anyone to chase them.” Though Stacey denied attacking Marion Jones he was subsequently arrested and turned over to Broward County Sheriff, Walter Clark.
On July 19th, instead of using a police lineup to allow the victim to identify her assailant, Sheriff Clark took Reuben Stacey to the home of Marion Jones. After Jones’ children screamed “there he is!” Jones and each of the deputies present received a $25 reward for identifying Stacey as Jones’ attacker. Deputies subsequently returned Stacey to the Broward County Jail where rumors quickly spread that Jones had been raped. Sheriff Clark stated that he noticed signs of a rising “lynching spirit” in the local populace, the black population of which had grown in the previous fifteen years from 1,870 to 15,000.
In response to rumors that local vigilantes planned to remove Stacey from the county jail after nightfall, Sheriff Clark decided to move Reuben Stacey to the Dade County jail in Miami “for his own protection.” During transport a group of at least fifty local men, which may have included Sheriff Clark, ran Stacey’s car off the road in broad daylight. The mob took Stacey to a spot near the home of Marion Jones and hung him from a pine tree using a wire clothesline from Jones’s house. He was then shot multiple times. After Stacey’s death a crowd, including several young white children, gathered to view his dead body. Whites also collected souvenirs of the event, including pieces of Stacey’s clothing, bark from the tree, and pieces of the wire used to hang him.
After only 40 minutes of deliberation, the coroner’s inquest concluded Stacey had died at the hands of “a person or persons unknown.” A Broward County grand jury four days later also led to no indictments. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) used a photo of the lynching of Reuben Stacey on a flyer trying to get support for the Costigan-Wagner Anti-Lynching Bill. The flyer focused on the physiological effects of the lynching on the seven white children in the photograph. The group’s efforts, however, did not garner sufficient support to pass the bill.
In 1988, over 50 years after Reuben Stacey was lynched, the Broward County Sun Sentinel interviewed witnesses who claimed that Sheriff Clark and his deputy (who was also his brother), planned Stacey’s lynching. The witness also claimed the brothers had killed other African Americans throughout the years, for offenses as minor as spitting on them. The brother’s reign of terror continued until 1950 when they were removed from office by the Governor and indicted on charges of corruption. They were later cleared when key witnesses “forgot” their testimony.
On July 19th, instead of using a police lineup to allow the victim to identify her assailant, Sheriff Clark took Reuben Stacey to the home of Marion Jones. After Jones’ children screamed “there he is!” Jones and each of the deputies present received a $25 reward for identifying Stacey as Jones’ attacker. Deputies subsequently returned Stacey to the Broward County Jail where rumors quickly spread that Jones had been raped. Sheriff Clark stated that he noticed signs of a rising “lynching spirit” in the local populace, the black population of which had grown in the previous fifteen years from 1,870 to 15,000.
In response to rumors that local vigilantes planned to remove Stacey from the county jail after nightfall, Sheriff Clark decided to move Reuben Stacey to the Dade County jail in Miami “for his own protection.” During transport a group of at least fifty local men, which may have included Sheriff Clark, ran Stacey’s car off the road in broad daylight. The mob took Stacey to a spot near the home of Marion Jones and hung him from a pine tree using a wire clothesline from Jones’s house. He was then shot multiple times. After Stacey’s death a crowd, including several young white children, gathered to view his dead body. Whites also collected souvenirs of the event, including pieces of Stacey’s clothing, bark from the tree, and pieces of the wire used to hang him.
After only 40 minutes of deliberation, the coroner’s inquest concluded Stacey had died at the hands of “a person or persons unknown.” A Broward County grand jury four days later also led to no indictments. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) used a photo of the lynching of Reuben Stacey on a flyer trying to get support for the Costigan-Wagner Anti-Lynching Bill. The flyer focused on the physiological effects of the lynching on the seven white children in the photograph. The group’s efforts, however, did not garner sufficient support to pass the bill.
In 1988, over 50 years after Reuben Stacey was lynched, the Broward County Sun Sentinel interviewed witnesses who claimed that Sheriff Clark and his deputy (who was also his brother), planned Stacey’s lynching. The witness also claimed the brothers had killed other African Americans throughout the years, for offenses as minor as spitting on them. The brother’s reign of terror continued until 1950 when they were removed from office by the Governor and indicted on charges of corruption. They were later cleared when key witnesses “forgot” their testimony.
Source
Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University, accessed March 1, 2017, http://brbl-dl.library.yale.edu/vufind/Record/3833735.
https://floridalynchings.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/the-lynching-of-reuban-stacey.pdf
Date
1935
Text
Do not look at the Negro.
His earthly problems are ended.
Instead, look at the seven WHITE children who gaze at this gruesome spectacle.
Is it horror or gloating on the face of the neatly dressed seven-year-old girl on the right?
Is the tiny four-year-old on the left old enough, one wonders, to comprehend the barbarism her elders have perpetrated?
Rubin Stacy, the Negro, who was lynched at Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on July 19, 1935, for “threatening and frightening a white woman,” suffered PHYSICAL torture for a few short hours. But what psychological havoc is being wrought in the minds of the white children? Into what kinds of citizens will they grow up? What kind of America will they help to make after being familiarized with such an inhuman, law-destroying practice as lynching?
The manacles, too, tell their own story. The Negro was powerless in the hands of the law, but the law was just as powerless to protect him from being lynched. Since 1922 over one-half the lynched victims have been taken from legal custody. Less than one percent of the lynchers have been punished, and they very lightly. More than 5,000 such instances of lynching have occurred without any punishment whatever, establishing beyond doubt that federal legislation is necessary, as in the case of kidnapping, to supplement state action.
What, you may ask, can YOU do?
In May, 1935, a filibuster in the United States Senate, led by a small group of senators, most of them from the states with the worst lynching record, succeeded in side-tracking the Costigan-Wagner Anti-Lynching Bill. This bill will be brought up again in the 1936 session of Congress.
1. Write to your Congressmen and to the two United States Senators from your state urging them to work assiduously and vote for passage of the bill.
2. Get the church, lodge or other fraternal organization, social club, and whatever other groups you belong to to pass resolutions urging Congressment and Senators from your state to vote for the bill.
3. Write letters to your newspapers and magazines urging their help.
4. Make as generous a contribution as you can to the organization which for twenty-five years has fought this evil and which is acting as a coordinating agent of church, labor, fraternal and other groups, with a total membership of 42,000,000, which are working for passage of the Costigan-Wagner Bill.
THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE
ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE
69 Fifth Avenue, New York
------------------------------------------------------
N.A.A.C.P.
69 Fifth Avenue, New York
Here is my contribution of $...........................for the fight against lynching.
Name………………………………………………..
Address……………………………………………...
City…………………………………………………..
State………………………………………………….
His earthly problems are ended.
Instead, look at the seven WHITE children who gaze at this gruesome spectacle.
Is it horror or gloating on the face of the neatly dressed seven-year-old girl on the right?
Is the tiny four-year-old on the left old enough, one wonders, to comprehend the barbarism her elders have perpetrated?
Rubin Stacy, the Negro, who was lynched at Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on July 19, 1935, for “threatening and frightening a white woman,” suffered PHYSICAL torture for a few short hours. But what psychological havoc is being wrought in the minds of the white children? Into what kinds of citizens will they grow up? What kind of America will they help to make after being familiarized with such an inhuman, law-destroying practice as lynching?
The manacles, too, tell their own story. The Negro was powerless in the hands of the law, but the law was just as powerless to protect him from being lynched. Since 1922 over one-half the lynched victims have been taken from legal custody. Less than one percent of the lynchers have been punished, and they very lightly. More than 5,000 such instances of lynching have occurred without any punishment whatever, establishing beyond doubt that federal legislation is necessary, as in the case of kidnapping, to supplement state action.
What, you may ask, can YOU do?
In May, 1935, a filibuster in the United States Senate, led by a small group of senators, most of them from the states with the worst lynching record, succeeded in side-tracking the Costigan-Wagner Anti-Lynching Bill. This bill will be brought up again in the 1936 session of Congress.
1. Write to your Congressmen and to the two United States Senators from your state urging them to work assiduously and vote for passage of the bill.
2. Get the church, lodge or other fraternal organization, social club, and whatever other groups you belong to to pass resolutions urging Congressment and Senators from your state to vote for the bill.
3. Write letters to your newspapers and magazines urging their help.
4. Make as generous a contribution as you can to the organization which for twenty-five years has fought this evil and which is acting as a coordinating agent of church, labor, fraternal and other groups, with a total membership of 42,000,000, which are working for passage of the Costigan-Wagner Bill.
THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE
ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE
69 Fifth Avenue, New York
------------------------------------------------------
N.A.A.C.P.
69 Fifth Avenue, New York
Here is my contribution of $...........................for the fight against lynching.
Name………………………………………………..
Address……………………………………………...
City…………………………………………………..
State………………………………………………….