A Crooked Death

Raymond M. Hyser James Madison University Dennis B. Downey Millersville University

A CROOKED DEATH: COATESVILLE, dada AND THE LYNCHING OF ZACHARIAH WALKER

Prophet

Andrew Jones, an itinerant blackened minister, preached a religious revitalisation at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Coatesville, Pennsylvania during the branch week of August 1911. The colored prophet, the local newspaper noted, predicted a great disaster, a great misfortune was about to occur on the town. Jones counseled local blacks to make no attempt at violence although they would be sorely tested. Less than two weeks later, Jones fortune telling came true when a company policeman was killed and a black man was lynched. This essay will briefly describe the events of the lynching, and more importantly, will focus on the multiple factors that helped hang what John Jay Chapman called an American Tragedy. Zachariah carriage was an obscure lever-puller at the worthy Brothers Steel Company, one of the two behemoth steel mill that dominated Coatesville. Brought from rural Virginia as an unskilled laborer, Walker hoped for a better life outside the Jim Crow South. After drunkenness all day Saturday, August 12, 1911, the black man staggered toward groundwork and discharged his pistol twice to frighten two rarify workers.



Edgar Rice, a commissioned coal and iron policeman of the worth(predicate) Brothers Company, heard the shots, found Walker along the darkened passage and proceeded to question him. I got a little sassy with him, Walker later explained, and when Rice attempted an arrest, the two men began to fight. I was too quick for him, Walker later

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bragged. I had my ordnance out first, and shot Rice two times. The policeman staggered wildly down the street and died on the steps of a minor immigrant store. Sensing the gravity of his crime, Walker fled the area and spent the darkness hiding in a barn. In reporting the encounter thirty-six hours later, the Coatesville...If you want to get a full essay, severalise it on our website: Orderessay



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