Sometimes our mistakes can lead to something very interesting. The error occurred when we excluded the caption to a photo in last week’s (April 1-7) paper in the article titled “The Rubin Stacy Story” by Mary Russ Milligan. This led to a family member of the man who was in the photo hanging by his neck from a tree to contact us. The family member, Dorothy Curry, called the office to voice her concern about not seeing the name of her relative anywhere in the story which seemed to imply that the man being hung was Rubin Stacy. Dorothy and her sisters, who were visiting with her in West Palm Beach, decided that another sister, Linda Edwards, would speak on the family’s behalf. “That’s not Rubin Stacy, that’s my granddaddy’s brother,” she told me without any hesitation and no fear. After much apologizing and begging their forgiveness for the mistake that we made and offering our sincere condolences, she and her other sisters accepted our apology and agreed to tell us more about her great-uncle. This is what they sent back to us.
“This is the information that we received during one of we received during one of our family reunions. With that picture that you published, we were told that that man hanging was our grandfather, “John Turner’s” Brother Hayes. We were told that a Black man took that picture while standing in the group acting as a white man due to his complexion.” –Linda Edwards
Hazel “Hayes” Turner
Died: May 18, 1918 Lynching
In 1918, a white mob on a manhunt for the murderer of a plantation owner lynched Hazel “Hayes” Turner (1898?–1918) in Brooks County, Georgia, although he was innocent of the crime another man committed. His wife, Mary Turner, whom he had married in Colquitt County, Georgia, and who spoke out about his innocence, was also lynched, burned, and riddled with bullets; their unborn child was cut from her body and stomped to death. In the end, the mob lynched thirteen people before the murderer was killed in a shootout with police, and more than 500 African Americans fled Brooks and Lowndes Counties in fear for their lives. Although local officials knew the names of the people who participated in the killings, they never charged or convicted any of them of the lynchings.
In response to the lynchings, the NAACP appealed to Missouri Congressman Leonidas Dyer, who crafted the 1922 Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill. The bill passed the U.S. House of Representatives but failed passage repeatedly in the U.S. Senate because of opposition from Southern Senators. Thus, the bill never became law.
Hayes Turner was murdered, his distraught wife Mary, who was eight months pregnant, publicly denounced her husband’s lynching. She denied that her husband had been involved in Smith’s killing, and threatened to have members of the mob arrested. The mob turned against her, determined to “teach her a lesson”.[7] Although she fled, Mary Turner was captured at noon on May 19.[1][7] The mob of several hundred took her to the bank in Brooks County near Folsom Bridge, over the Little River, which forms the border with Lowndes County.[7][2] According to investigator Walter F. White of the NAACP, Mary Turner was tied and hung upside down by the ankles, her clothes soaked with gasoline, and burned from her body. Her belly was slit open with a knife like those used “in splitting hogs.”[7] Her “unborn babe” fell to the ground and gave “two feeble cries.”[7] Its head was crushed by a member of the mob with his heel, and the crowd shot hundreds of bullets into Turner’s body.[7][2][11] Mary Turner was cut down and buried with her child near the tree, with a whiskey bottle marking the grave.[1] The Atlanta Constitution published an article with the subheadline: “Fury of the People Is Unrestrained.”[12]
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