The Columbia Race Riot

In February 25, 1946, a 19-year-old, black Navy veteran narrowly escaped a lynching in Columbia, Tennessee. James Stephenson accompanied his mother to the Caster-Knott department store to complain about a botched a repair job on the family's radio. African American customers were often treated unfairly by white businesses in this era, but it was unusual for them to demand equal treatment as Stephenson did. The white repairman followed Stephenson and his mother out of the store, and attacked them as they left the building. Although Stephenson was struck first, he was arrested and jailed on a charge of attempted murder. As a mob of white citizens formed outside the police station, the sheriff, a white man named James Underwood, feared he could not protect Stephenson. Sheriff Underwood contacted some local African American community leaders who snuck Stephenson out of town, first to Nashville and then Chicago.

The mob continued to grow throughout the afternoon and into the evening. People in the African American section of town, known as the "Mink Slide," feared that the mob might attack their neighborhood. African American men had been lynched by mobs in Maury County in 1927 and 1933. They also feared that the angry mob might break into their homes and businesses to search for Stephenson. Business-owners and home-owners, many of them military veterans, armed themselves and prepared to protect their homes and property. The Sherriff Underwood agreed to have some of his officers stand guard around the outside of the neighborhood.

Things seemed calm that night, until four white police officers decided enter the Mink Slide. Someone shouted for the officers to stop, and when they failed to stop shots were fired. All four were wounded. When they heard gunshots the white mob, which had been waiting nearby, came running. Sheriff Underwood and his men stopped the mob from entering the area and called the state highway patrol to ask for help. When the highway patrol arrived they accompanied police into the neighborhood, breaking down doors and windows to enter houses. They claimed to be looking for the black assailants, though many local residents felt they were really ransacking the neighborhood and destroying property in retribution. Most of the damage and violence, though, came from the police and not the white mob who were prevented from entering the area.

The governor also called in the State National Guard. When white mob members tried to seize weapons from the local National Guard armory, the National Guard stopped them.

More than 100 African American black citizens of Columbia were arrested. The event was reported in newspapers across the country. The NAACP immediately sent two lawyers, Walter White and Thurgood Marshall, to defend the arrested black citizens. Two Tennessee lawyers, Z. Alexander Looby and Maurice Weaver also helped.

Two days later, two of the men in jail were killed by police while they were being interrogated. The police said the men had taken guns from the police and were trying to escape.

Eventually 25 African American men were put on trial for shooting the four officers the night of the riot. The trial was moved to Lawrenceburg because the court agreed the issue was too controversial to be heard fairly in Columbia. An all white jury only convicted one of the 25 men. He was later pardoned.