Anatomy of a Lynching: The Killing of Claude Neal

Chapter 5 The Local Reaction

Chapter 5 The Local Reaction In view of the tumultuous events which engulfed Marianna and Jackson County on October 26 and 27, life seemingly returned to normality with astonishing rapidity. On Sunday, October 28, ministers in Jackson County reported good attendance at morning and evening services. A newsman for a Montgomery, Alabama , paper, commented the same day, "Marianna goes on her placid way apparently unaware of the drama that has attracted the attention of a nation. A waitress in a downtown cafe replied today to an inquiry as to what she thought of the excitement of the last two days, 'Well, it certainly kept us busy with so many strangers here to feed.'"l Howard Kester, a noted southern liberal who visited Marianna only a few days after Neal's death, observed that many citizens preferred to gloss over the violent events as if they were inevitable or even routine. He sensed that "On the whole the lynching was accepted . . . as a righteous act." Kester's views were probably partial. He was a liberal doing investigative work fdr the NAACP. Some church people and a number of educated citizens stated privately among themselves that they wished it hadn't happened. But as a local newspaper editor commented later, "Nobody stood up and said it should not have happened." He declared that the white people of Jackson County 1. Jackson County Floridan, November 2, 1934, p. 3; MontgomeryAdvertiser, October 29, 1934, p. 1. 95 96 Anatomy of a Lynching did not condemn the outcome because "their tempers were too high; they sought vengeance for justice."2 Undoubtedly, Jackson County's principal officials would have preferred to see the letter of the law upheld in the Neal case. Mayor Burton did not want his city to get a reputation for lawlessness . He made a statement to a reporter from nearby Dothan, Alabama, that Marianna was "anxious to forget the occurrence and pleaded that the majority of good citizens should not suffer from the indiscretions of a few."The mayor primarily focused on Saturday's riots, which he blamed on "out-of-townagitators." He apologized for the temporary social disorder which had prevented visitors from coming to Marianna, declaring that the city hadsuffered an invasion: I am sorry to say that this [riot] caught us unprepared; we had never anticipated such an incident. I doubt there was a handful of our city people in the mob which surrounded the jail Saturday. Perhaps you won't like to hear this, but the crowd was made up mostly of Alabamians . . . a sprinkling of Georgians and people from the south end of our county. . . . I had only two policemen; to send them against that mob meant probable injuries and death for somebody; what I did •was tell them to circulate among the crowd . . . and spot the leaders for later arrest, meantime holding them back as well as they could.3 The mayor made only a few remarks to the press about the lynching of Neal, mainly deploring the fact that Neal's body was brought to Marianna because this led to the ensuing riot. Mayor Burton also attempted to stem unfavorable publicity from national media over the Neal episode when he sent a telegram to Pathe News in New York to request that it not use numerous pictures of Jackson County taken by its cameramen. He appealed to the director of Pathe that "the outrage" had occurred "20 miles" from Marianna and did not reflect the views of the "majority of good citizens" of his city.4 2. Howard A. Kester, "The Marianna, Florida Lynching," 13, in Lynching File, Series 278, Florida State Archives, Tallahassee; Author's interviews with Doc Grant, June 10, 1980, and lohn Winslett, June 10, 1980. 3. Dothan Eagle,October 30, 1934, pp. 1, 2. 4. Jackson County Floridan, November 2, 1934, p. 1. Pathemay havedestroyed the film taken of the Cannidy house and the fields and swamps nearby as well as The Local Reaction 97 State's Attorney John H. Carter, a member of a prominent family in Jackson County, and a distinguished lawyer, "deplored the manner in which the Negro was punished." He wrote Governor Sholtz, "I sincerely regret that this thing has occurred in our State and especially in our county. We did our best to keep this prisoner from the mob; and the matter will be thoroughly investigated." Carter conceded, however, in an article in a...