Background
In the spring of 1908, white yeoman farmers and fishermen in Fulton County, Kentucky, and Lake and Obion counties in neighboring western Tennessee began to organize as Night Riders in opposition to the West Tennessee Land Company, a group of private investors who had acquired most of Reelfoot Lake and announced plans to drain it for cotton cultivation. The local people had long used the lake for fishing and farmed the fertile land nearby. They did not want it converted to exclusively private use. For months they hanged, beat and threatened other locals, with violence extending to threats and lynchings of African Americans to drive them out of the area. This was also a period when locals were resisting the expansion of the cotton economy into this area, which had been dominated by yeomen farmers. By the early 20th century, some African Americans in Fulton County had become landowners. Among them was David Walker, who had a 21 1/2-acre farm a few miles from Hickman, where he and his wife were raising a large family. They had built their log cabin farmhouse.The killings
After David Walker, a married African-American farmer and family man, had an altercation with a white man, a mob of 50 Night Riders came to his house at night and threatened him, saying he had to go with them. When he refused to come out of his house, the lynch mob poured coal oil on it and set it on fire. Walker pleaded for the safety of him and his family, and then walked outside, where he was shot so many times that his body was riddled with bullets. The same thing happened when David Walker's wife came outside, holding a baby in her arms."She held in her arms their infant child and begged the Night Riders for mercy. Disregarding her pleadings the infuriated mob opened fire and a bullet pierced the body of an infant in its mother's arms. A second shot struck the mother in the abdomen and she fell, still holding the dead body of her infant."Three children came out next, and were quickly shot and killed by the mob. Walker's eldest son, however, refused to leave the burning log cabin. The '' Courier-Journal'' reported, "There is hardly a doubt but the oldest son of Walker preferred death by burning rather than to placing himself as the mercy of the mob, and it is probable that his charred body will be found among the debris."Wright, George C. ''Racial Violence in Kentucky, 1865-1940: Lynchings, Mob Rule, and "Legal Lynchings"'', University of Illinois Press, 1990, pp. 123-124 Local papers blamed Walker for the events, describing him as "surly" and having been disrespectful to a white woman. George Wright wrote that a total of seven family members were killed, but E.M. Beck and Stewart E. Tolnay say that it may have been eight. A 2001 Associated Press report suggested that one or a few of the Walker children survived.
Catalyst for the lynching
According to local newspapers, the Fulton County Night Riders claimed that David Walker had sworn "at a white woman", considered a violation ofGovernor's condemnation
Augustus E. Willson denounced the Night Riders for the lynching of the Walker family. He said,"If two or three men had gone to this poor cabin and murdered this family, the crime would have shocked humanity with its revelation of incredible weakness, brutality and dastardly cowardice. That a larger number—some fifty men—joined in such a crime, multiplies its cowardliness and wickedness fiftyfold, and makes every member of the band guilty of murder in the first degree."Willson said the lynching of the Walker family was "an outgrowth and the logical results of the toleration of night rider crimes in the state. It is only one step removed from civil war." From 1907 through 1908, other Night Riders had committed increasingly destructive crimes in the Black Patch Tobacco Wars, especially in Kentucky and Tennessee counties to the east of here. They had raided and took control of the county seats of Princeton, Hopkinsville, and Russellville, Kentucky, destroying tobacco warehouses and tons of stored tobacco of non-PPA farmers, and raiding major planters in Crittenden County. As they escaped control of the planters, they made more attacks against African Americans as well. Willson offered a $500 reward for the arrest and conviction of any Night Rider who participated in the Walker family lynching. He urged law-abiding citizens to defend themselves, promising a Governor's pardon to anyone who shot and killed a Night Rider.Wright, 1990, ''Racial Violence in Kentucky'', p. 191
Aftermath
Seven of the Walker family were brutally murdered. As was typical of lynchings of black people, no one was prosecuted for this crime.Wright (1990), ''Racial Violence in Kentucky'', p. 321. https://books.google.com/books?id=f9gzdOkMfbAC&dq=lynching+david+walker+family+fulton+hickman&pg=PT343 Violence continued in the region, culminating in the kidnapping of two prominent white attorneys and lynching murder of one, Captain Quentin Rankin, a shareholder in the Land Company. GovernorSee also
*References
Further reading