A quick verdict, then new clues to McDaniel lynching

CHARLOTTE OBSERVER

An editorial in the July 6, 2029 edition of The Charlotte Observer questioned whether Willie McDaniel’s death by hanging would be declared a lynching.

Editor’s note: Part 3 in a series.

A young Black tenant farmer named Willie McDaniel was found dead in 1929, the morning after arguing about pay with his white landlord. 

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Remembrance Project, in collaboration with the Equal Justice Initiative, seeks to tell the truth about two racial terror lynchings in Mecklenburg – of Willie McDaniel and Joe McNeely – and to memorialize these men.

Put together from more than 50 newspaper stories, census and genealogical records, and more. It challenges the reports of the time and asks what wasn’t in them. 

On July 24, The Post will host a free, public, panel discussion – “Knowing, and Healing, Through History” – 6-7:30 p.m. at the Allegra Westbrooks Regional Library, 2412 Beatties Ford Road. RSVP here. 

A free, public soil-collection ceremony for Willie McDaniel will be held at Reedy Creek Park and Nature Preserve at a date to be announced. Go online at ItHappenedHereCLT.com for details.

The story so far:  Young tenant farmer Willie McDaniel and his white landlord Mell Grier argued, then grappled, around noon June 29, 1929, after Grier refused to pay McDaniel for work he did. McDaniel’s body was found the next day. A coroner’s jury is about to hear the case.

Mell Grier, the landowner who’d had an altercation with his tenant Willie McDaniel on June 29, was second to testify before the coroner’s jury hearing McDaniel’s case.  

Yes, Grier confirmed, during the confrontation six days ago he threw a rock at McDaniel – “about like a baseball, I guess.” 

Yes, he went into his house and came back with a shotgun, and aimed at McDaniel as the man fled, but didn’t shoot – because, he said, McDaniel was too far away.

Yes, he followed McDaniel and took the shotgun. He wasn’t angry, he testified; he “happened to remember,” as the Observer put it, that McDaniel had not fed the mules, and followed him to tell him to do it.

Yes, he searched another tenant’s cabin for McDaniel. He did not find him. In fact, he said, he had not seen McDaniel alive or dead since just after noon that Saturday, when McDaniel fled from him.

He did not kill him or participate in his killing, he said. 

Did anyone ask if he knew who did? Newspaper stories do not say.

The jury – Davis Robinson, Robert Watkins, A.L. Norman, Frank B. Phillips, Boyce Simpson and Bob Byrd (according to the News) or Robert Boyd (Observer) – had heard Rural Police Chief Vic Fesperman first. He recounted Grier coming to his office Saturday to report a fight with McDaniel, then being called to the Grier farm Sunday. 

Drs. C.S. McLaughlin and L.B. Newell told the jury their examination showed a broken neck and injuries to neck and wrists, giving them "the impression," the News reported, McDaniel had been hanged. 

The July 5 Observer story, reviewing the injuries, had noted for the first time “a severe gash across his forehead” that was deemed not to have caused his death, according to McLaughlin. 

Did no one ask about this injury, or the “heavy blow to the head” mentioned in Blythe’s July 4 story? It is not mentioned.

Black tenants on the Grier farm then spoke of what each saw: The confrontation, the rock, the chase, the shotgun, the niece, the cabin search.

Jim Edmonds, who shared the McDaniels’ cabin, answered a direct question from the coroner, saying he too had what one paper called “some trouble” with Grier in the past, and that Grier had been “pretty hard to get along with.”

Testimony wrapped up. 

No evidence was offered, the Observer pointed out, that “any of the premises on the Grier farm” had been searched, at any time.  

Reporter LeGette Blythe, who had been expected to testify after publishing his theory of the crime, was not called.

Jake Newell, the experienced lawyer hired by McDaniel’s friends, asked no witness questions, telling the Observer “he was told it was not customary for anyone” except the coroner or jurors to do so.

Robinson, Watkins, Norman, Phillips, Simpson and Boyd or Byrd deliberated for 90 minutes, then declared they could not solve this puzzle. Their verdict: Willie McDaniel “came to his death of a broken neck caused by a person or persons unknown.”

After the hearing, Fesperman, attorney Newell and Brainard S. Whiting, assisting Newell, announced they expected next week’s regularly scheduled grand jury to take up the case. Then, said the News, Newell revealed a surprise: He had received a letter, signed “A White Man.” It gave the names of witnesses with information “which should explain some phases of the killing.”

“The writer,” the News went on, “said that he would be willing to disclose his identity except that if he did so, it would mean his death. Mr. Newell said that he would investigate fully.”

This letter and its contents, including names of witnesses and its curious choice of the words "phases of the killing" — what could that mean? — did not appear again in any reports. 
Also in that day’s News: an editorial, the bottom of Page 8, named the crime a lynching. 

“Apparently a negro has been lynched in Mecklenburg County and from what facts as are out in the open, it was about the most excuseless lynching that has ever occurred anywhere in any land.”

The next day’s Observer would disagree: “‘(M)ob demonstration’ was conspicuously absent, and it is not likely that a case of ‘lynching’ may be established in Mecklenburg’s record.”

But one more surprise came, that evening.

Sallie McDaniel had found out earlier that day that her husband had already been buried. 

 
The undertaker said he hadn’t been paid, and it didn’t appear he would be, the Observer reported, so he’d gone ahead and buried McDaniel in a pauper’s plot at Piney Grove. It was actually Pinewood, a city cemetery still on 6th Street today, beside Elmwood. Current cemetery records show McDaniel was buried in “city ground,” land designated for the poor – as was Joe McNeely, the other man killed in a Mecklenburg lynching. Records don’t show locations for the men, and neither has a marker.

Willie McDaniel’s wife, family and friends had not been told of his burial. 

Now, Jake Newell announced, because of revelations during that day’s hearing, and some new reports he’d received – and at the request of Sallie – an extraordinary thing would happen: Willie McDaniel’s body would be exhumed.  

NEXT: A shocking exhumation – and more questions.

For the CMRP, longtime Charlotte journalists Gary and Helen Schwab researched the killings of Willie McDaniel and Joe McNeely, drawing from work done by EJI and local historians Michael Moore, Tom Hanchett, Pamela Grundy, and UNC Charlotte’s Willie Griffin, then adding more and new resources. 

Also in the series

Part 1: Facing our history: The 1929 lynching of Willie McDaniel 

Part 2: Facing history of terrorism: Ominous words, another killing

Part 4: A shocking exhumation, and more speculation on lynching

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