Garfield King (c. 1880-1898)
MSA SC 3520-13747
Biography:
Garfield King was an African American resident of the Trappe district of Salisbury, Wicomico County, Maryland, and graduate of the Princess Anne "colored" Academy. On Saturday, May 21, 1898, 18-year-old King shot Herman Kenney, a 22-year-old white man. The shooting was probably racially motivated, as it occurred outside a store after two groups of white and black youths including Kenney and King were arguing. Kenney had demanded that King get out of his way and pushed him aside. King responded by drawing a revolver and shooting Kenney, who was immediately taken to the hospital where he struggled for his life for the the next seventy-two hours. In the hospital, Kenney testified to the police that it was King who had shot him, while King claimed that Kenney had hit him first and that he had shot him in self-defense. Kenney died on Tuesday night.
By Wednesday night, May 25, many men of the town were growing anxious to take the law into their own hands and take revenge on King. Between about 12:35 and 12:50 a.m., about 100 to 150 armed men approached the county jail where King was being held. The unnamed leader of the mob demanded the keys to the jail from sheriff, who refused to hand them over. The men then took a telephone pole to break down the jail door and used an axe to break the lock on King's cell. They dragged King out into the jail yard while kicking, clubbing, and beating him. They hanged him to a tree with a rope, then fired as many as 50 gunshots into his chest at the command of the leader. The mob then walked away and left the body to be taken down later by a local judge, who arrived after the lynching had already taken place.
The Baltimore Weekly Sun reported that this was the first lynching in the history of Wicomico County. White and black citizens of Salisbury alike condemned the lynching of King and decried the undermining of the rule of law. The unnamed author of an editorial in The Salisbury Advertiser printed on May 28 asserted that the lynchers did not realize the seriousness of their offense in dealing a "blow" to civil government, and that the community needed to have more faith that justice would be carried out through the court system and under the rule of law. The following Tuesday, May 31, many African American citizens of Salisbury met at the John Wesley Methodist Episcopal Church, where they drafted a resolution condemning the lynching that was published in The Salisbury Advertiser the following Saturday, June 4. The resolution affirmed the principles that a person is innocent until proven guilty and that the right to a trial by jury was a fundamental element of the preservation of peace and order in the community. That same night, a committee of five persons including the well-known civil rights lawyer of Baltimore W. Asby Hawkins and former state comptroller and state tax commissioner Robert P. Graham was appointed to petition Governor Lloyd Lowndes to offer a one-thousand dollar reward for the arrest of the lynchers.
Link to Lynching Profile Questionnaire
Return to Garfield King's Introductory Page
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