Reported Lynchings in Ouachita Parish

I have posted before, listing reports of lynchings that have been found in Ouachita Parish newspapers. I can see the stats that show what articles are looked at and at least once a week or more, someone is looking at that list. That got me curious as to how many known lynchings there are in just Ouachita Parish. I did some snooping. It was surprisingly hard.

First off, I couldn’t find a hard list of names. Most sites only state the number for each parish. Ouachita was among the bloodiest, at 38 persons. When some names were given, upon inspection, it sounded like it was a plain one on one murder, or they happened in another parish. Some of the ones I have compiled in the chart below, I am still unsure of. For instance, Laura Porter was taken out of jail and was never seen again. The rumors are that she was thrown in the Ouachita River. Sometimes women were just run out of town and told never to return upon pain of death. That happened in Morehouse parish that I know of. It may have happened to Laura, but we will never know. I still added her. I think the rumors were true.

I found one report of a lynching in 1860 or so reported in national papers, yet the local Ouachita Register stated they wanted to lynch him but cooler heads prevailed and he was given a trial, found guilty and legally hung. Who do you believe?

This list is by NO means complete. I found 39 individuals. I wanted all of them, not just those reported between certain years. I used newspapers, government investigation documents and the abstracts of coroner’s reports to compile it. You will see that 1876 was by far the bloodiest year. It was said that bodies were seen floating down the Ouachita, but were probably never documented. It is said that Eaton Logwood died of his wounds several months later. He was wounded the same time as his friend Rev. Primus Johnson was killed holding his child. Logwood should probably be on this list too. Four more men could be added to this list I suspect were lynched in October 1878: Daniel (or Saul) Hill, Herman Bell, Sam Wallace and Joshua Hall. All were shot, rumored to be by White Leaguers.

The youngest was a little girl, only 11 months old. We don’t even know her first name. She was killed in her mother’s arms and her father tortured and killed. Her mother Eliza Pinkston barely escaped with her life and is probably the most nationally known of the victims of 1876. Surprisingly, there are three white men on this list. Their names are in italics. Murder and arson were their alleged crimes. The area on and around the courthouse square is soaked in blood. At least 13 men were lynched to trees there or across the street where Anna Grey Noe park is now. For more information, you can find newspaper articles on Newspapers.com with your library card through our webpage here: https://www.oplib.org/history-databases .