[N.B. This is the historical account of Arthur Henry’s life and death I offered as lead investigator of his lynching at the dedication of the Equal Justice Initiative marker commemorating him on December 6, 2023 at the Wells’Built Museum in downtown Orlando]
Arthur Henry was a WWI veteran. He was released from the U.S. Army in 1918 and returned to his ancestral home in Lake City. He moved to Orlando sometime between 1920 and 1923.
His reasons for leaving
his Lake City ancestral home seem fairly clear in retrospect. Lake City was the
site of a civil war battle in which Confederate forces had achieved a rare
victory and followed that victory by slaughtering the wounded Black union
soldiers they had captured. That event was celebrated by the erection of
towering stone monuments at the Olustee battle site and in the city square in
Lake City by the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
Additionally, two major lynchings occurred in Henry’s hometown during his lifetime, one involving six Black men just before Arthur Henry’s entry into the service prior to WWI and an additional lynching just after he had arrived home in Lake City after being released from service. My guess is that Arthur left Lake City with his new wife, his mother and two sisters, hoping to escape the racial terror of his hometown while seeking new opportunity in an Orlando undergoing a land boom and an agricultural labor shortage amidst the Great Migration of African-Americans moving north.
A Grim Ending to a
Sacred Holiday
On Thanksgiving day 1925, Arthur and his family attended services at a church in his Parramore neighborhood. After church, as they were eating their Thanksgiving dinner, some white men came into the neighborhood and began shooting randomly in the air and at houses. The Orlando police were summoned.
The details of what happened next are not totally clear. Conflicting newspaper reporting provides very different accounts of the ensuing events. What is known is that when Orlando police detectives entered the Henry residence, an exchange of gunfire would leave both Arthur Henry and two OPD detectives wounded. They would all be taken to the Orlando General Hospital for treatment, Arthur in the boiler room in the basement, the Negro Ward, and the two white officers in the floors above. A parade of visitors to the officers would alarm the director of the hospital after hearing their threatening comments as they departed. He asked the Orlando police chief for a guard for Arthur Henry, who had been shackled to his bed, and one was posted.
Confabulation: Minimizing the Offense, Rationalizing the Outcome
The local press played
a major role in rationalizing this lynching with its reporting. Arthur Henry’s
name was never mentioned in any of the headlines and only rarely in the bodies
of the stories themselves. Rather, he was described simply as “the Negro,” a
dehumanizing reference based in race. And accounts of his kidnapping often used
terms such as “spirited away” thus minimizing the gravity of the offense.
The Anglo-American presumption of innocent until proven guilty was not honored at any stage of the reporting which concluded that Arthur Henry was guilty of shooting the two officers though he was never charged with anything and never placed on trial for any crimes. Ironically, his Mother, Wife, and two sisters, who witnessed part or all of the exchange with the Orlando police officers, were arrested and taken to jail. Of course, being a witness is never a criminal offense.
Another disturbing aspect of this incident is the role of witnesses. The Black nurse at the hospital tending Arthur Henry initially reported seeing the three gunmen coming down the hall. In a subsequent story, she reported being “too excited to remember” what the gunmen looked like. This strongly suggests witness tampering.
Moreover, the white guard
at Arthur’s bedside reported being overpowered by the men who snuck up on him
from behind. But there is no evidence that the guard was ever asked to identify
these men who clearly were perpetrating a capital felony, kidnapping. Nor would
there ever be any charges against those who perpetrated it. This suggests
possible collusion.
In the days before medical examiners, a coroner’s jury was used to investigate unexplained deaths. The all-white coroner’s jury in the Arthur Henry kidnapping and murder case met for two days before returning a verdict that he had met his death at the hands of “unknown persons.” This was a trope used throughout the South when lynchings were actually prosecuted. My guess is that the persons involved were well known but in a Jim Crow society would never be identified, much less brought to justice.
So, this is a sad story I have related. And there are a number of lessons I think it offers us. As the proverb called Sankofa from the Aka tradition of Ghana teaches us, we must learn from the past in order to build our future. And there is a silver lining.
Diaspora of a Vibrant Family
In the process of researching the family of Arthur Henry, I came across a name and an email for a relative who had placed information on the FamilySearch genealogy site. I contacted her and about a year later got a call from another relative, Dr. Michael Henry, who was the head of personnel for the Little Rock, AR school district. After a few minutes of discussion two things became clear. First, while Arthur Henry had no descendants, there was a large family of his cousins alive today. And second, neither Dr. Henry nor any of the extended Henry family had ever heard the account of what had happened to their kinsman in Orlando in 1925.
Dr. Henry asked me if I would be willing to meet the family on Zoom to relate my findings. I agreed and in two different Zoom sessions met with 40 members of the Henry family. Like Dr. Henry, none of them knew anything about the lynching of Arthur Henry. And I have to tell you, I was always conscious as I related those events that I was speaking to a Black family about an atrocity committed against their kinsman by men who looked a lot like me. It as a very intense moment to say the least.
But the Henry family proved to be incredibly accepting, inviting me into their midst and treating me as a family member. In the process of getting to know them, I discovered eight of them hold doctorates of varying disciplines and one has been a city councilman in Daytona Beach while another is the current mayor there. This is a remarkable family, indeed, thriving in the face of adversity, the quintessential American Dream. A number of the family of Arthur Henry are with us today and their representatives will respond to this history shortly.
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Those who believe religion and politics aren't
connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi
For what does G-d require of you but to do
justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d? - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures
Do not be daunted by the enormity of the
world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not
obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi
Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)
©
Harry Coverston, 2023
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