 |
| Lynching Ponchatoula, Louisiana Photo Courtesy: Ponchatoula, Louisiana Photo Collection |
On September 21, 1900, on an oak tree on Beech Street in Ponchatoula, Louisiana., four African American men who were accused of robbing the family of Louis Hotfelter, were taken from the jail cells and lynched. They were charged with choking and beating the wife of Louis Hotfelder. It was alleged that Charles Elliot, Isaiah Rollins, Nathaniel Bowman and George Bickham were forced to confess to the robbery at the Hotfelter's home.
It was reported that the wife of Hotfelter later identifies another man two days later. Nevertheless, the angry mob wanted to make an example out of these men regardless if they were innocence or not. The mob was determined to send a loud message to the African American community concerning attacks on Anglo-Saxon people in the Ponchatoula community.
14 African American men were picked up and detained. Sheriff Frank P. Mix couldn't hold back the angry mob, they used axes to break down the door of the jail and forcibly to took Elliot, Rollins, Bowman, and Bickham to an oak tree in the African American community to be lynched.
Dr. Kingsley Garrison recalls looking at the photograph as a boy around the age of seven. He knew James Elliot the brother of Charles Elliot. He said his mother had the picture looking at it and somehow he was able to see it. Although Dr. Garrison said that folks who talked about the lynchings is now deceased and not too many people are not talking about it anymore.
Their bodies hung under the oak tree until the following morning when Mayor William Jackson ordered that their bodies be cut down. It was an unknown passenger who took the photograph. As I sit here thinking about the funeral I attend of Jermaine Carter of Greenville. Jermaine was lynched in Greenville, Mississippi in 2010. My mind started to go back to the lynching site of Raynard Johnson in 2000, in Kokomo, Mississippi, and the lynching of Roy Veal in April of 2004 in Woodville, Mississippi.
Most recently a little boy biracial in New Hampshire received injuries from an attempted lynching by a teenager. They called the little boy racial names and threw sticks and rocks at his legs. Now the teenage boy said it was an accident.
MAJOR BIOGRAPHICAL RESOURCES
hammondstar.com
Ponchatoula, Louisiana
