The Truth About Alonzo

ON THE LAST DAY of Black History Month, February 29, 2020, Taylor Stewart stood on a small traffic island in Coos Bay, Oregon, addressing 200 people. They had all gathered on this particular site, sandwiched between the bustling 101 South highway and where the old Coos Bay City Hall used to stand, because an atrocity had been committed on that soil more than a century ago. Here the harrowing nightmare commenced for Alonzo Tucker, a young Black man who in 1902 was murdered by a white lynch mob. Now, more than 100 years later, people congregated to mourn his loss and commemorate his life.

Taylor Stewart had worked tirelessly for more than a year to make the memorial event happen, founding the Oregon Remembrance Project, partnering with the Equal Justice Initiative and the Coos History Museum, and garnering support from the City of Coos Bay. 

Breana Lamkin, representative from the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), had flown out to Oregon from Alabama to attend because the recognition of lynching victims is central to EJI’s mission. Founded as a civil rights organization 30 years ago to provide legal assistance to folks on Alabama’s death row, EJI has broadened to shine a light on the racialized roots of the larger system of mass incarceration. In 2018, EJI opened The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration and The National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which honors the thousands of victims of lynching in this country. Supporting the creation of local memorials across the country is part of EJI’s community initiative. 

“What we memorialize says something about what we value,” Lamkin told the crowd gathered in Coos Bay. 

Just three days before the memorial for Alonzo Tucker, the House of Representatives finally approved legislation categorizing lynching as a federal hate crime. It took more than 120 years and almost 200 attempts to address lynching on a federal level. Despite majority support in the House, there was still opposition to its passage. As of this writing, the Emmett Till Antilynching Act is still being held up in the Senate by one individual, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY). 

For centuries, this country has failed to address lynching as unequivocal white supremacist violence, even as law enforcement and white vigilantes continue to murder Black people. The global surge of Black Lives Matter protests in May is part of a continuous Black freedom struggle, most recently a response to the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police, as well as the murders of those whose names are not as well known. In February of this year, 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery was hunted, shot, and killed by three white men who filmed the murder. It was not until the video went viral in May, resulting in public outrage, that these three men were arrested and charged for murder. 

In light of these events, Stewart’s work to honor Alonzo Tucker is both pressing and personal. “When you talk about why is this particular thing so important,” Stewart states, “I’m a young African American male; the only thing separating me and Alonzo Tucker is 100 years. There’s nothing different besides 100 years.” 

If you are Black, 1902 is just a breath away from today. 

PICKING UP THE BATON 

Stewart first learned about Alonzo Tucker and the efforts of the Equal Justice Initiative in 2018 through the University of Portland. He took part in the Civil Rights Immersion, offered by the University’s Moreau Center for Service and Justice, and he had the opportunity to visit EJI’s museum and memorial, located in Montgomery, Alabama. 

This trip set the path for the work he is doing now. “None of this would have happened if I didn’t go on that UP trip,” he says. 

Currently attending Portland State University’s Masters in Social Work program, Stewart was born in Portland and has lived here his entire life. 

It was in college at University of Portland when he came to both activism and a deeper understanding of race and racism and their importance in society. “It’s in fact the cornerstone of our civilization,” he says. “So having my eyes opened to all of that completely changed my whole perspective.” 

On the immersion trip, Stewart was most moved by learning that it was the work of everyday Black people fighting collectively in the civil rights movement that made it successful. He realized he had a role to play in that same Black freedom struggle as it manifests today. “It truly does mean a lot to me to be part of this legacy,” he says. “You’re standing on the shoulders of giants. I was moved by all I saw, the people who came before. It motivates you to run your leg of the race so that you can hand off the baton to the next generation.” 

So Stewart founded the Oregon Remembrance Project, Oregon’s chapter of EJI’s Community Remembrance Project. The project has three stages, what EJI calls “the phases of remembrance”: a public soil collection, the installation of a two-sided sign, and the placement of a monument, the twin of which stands at EJI’s National Memorial. The February 29 event in Coos Bay was Oregon’s first stage. Those present placed the soil in two jars. The soil had been previously collected from the multiple sites where Tucker was tortured and lynched. One jar will stay in the Coos History Museum for inclusion in a future exhibit; the other will be displayed at the Legacy Museum, the National Memorial, or EJI offices in Montgomery. 

 

UNCOVERING THE TRUTH 

Historians have not found any written records left by Alonzo Tucker. The little that is known about his life has been pieced together from a white perspective and must be sifted through to remove, as much as possible, the racial bias and assumptions of the day. This bias and erasure are regular barriers to the accurate histories of communities of color in this nation. 

Originally from Maryland, Tucker moved from the Sacramento area to Coos County, less than two years before his murder. He was a prize fighter, and newspapers reported one of his Sacramento fights in 1900 as “the best ever seen in that section of California.” Articles from the Sacramento Bee do detail Tucker being arrested on one earlier occasion while still in California, but it seems he interfered to stop a fight, and he was found not guilty by a white jury. 

Twenty-eight years old and married, Tucker might have originally come to work in the mines in the nearby town of Libby like the majority of Black men who came to the area, but then moved into Marshfield (now Coos Bay). He was an industrious man with many occupations: boxer, boot black at a local barber shop, mail carrier, and business owner of a small gym called The School of Physical Culture housed in a building formerly occupied by YMCA. 

According to Harry Walker, who was an eye witness to Tucker’s lynching and offered testimony in the local newspaper The World, Tucker used to exercise every day by running the six miles total between Marshfield and Libby, training for upcoming boxing matches. To make extra money, he also would carry mail between the two towns on his runs. 

Witnesses from that time said there was another reason he took that route so often—it is where he would meet Lizzy Dennis, a white woman, for consensual romantic trysts. Lizzy Dennis’s accusation of rape resulted in his lynching. 

The official story at the time was that, on the morning of September 17, 1902, Lizzy Dennis, wife of a local coal miner and mother of two, three, or four children (records vary), was attacked and assaulted by Tucker on her way to Libby, near the bridge and the cemetery. Tucker was incarcerated by marshal Jack Carter that evening. Meanwhile, angry white men gathered into a mob of 200 and marched to the jail intent on kidnapping and murdering Tucker. 

Tucker supposedly escaped from the marshal who was trying to help him. He hid all night, was found in the morning, and was shot multiple times. He died on the way to the bridge. The mob, which had grown to 300, then hung him and left his body for hours. 

So many elements in this “official” story are suspect or categorically false, as shown by the 1974 World interview with three white community leaders who witnessed the lynching as boys. They all agreed that Dennis and Tucker were having an affair and would meet almost daily on his run to Libby. That particular day, the trio said Tucker and Dennis were spotted together by the town doctor. They suggested Dennis leveled the accusation of sexual assault to avoid the affair coming to light. Some local media at the time also expressed doubt about the accusation. 

Martin Steckel had seen Tucker right after the alleged assault: “I don’t think he had attacked any woman…as nonchalant as he was. He didn’t seem to have a worry in the world. He just come over the hill there and down in sight of us and they made up that mob and never asked no questions.” 

Tucker was arrested without struggle and placed in jail by the marshal, protesting his innocence throughout the entire ordeal. When the mob came to the jail to administer what they called “Southern justice,” marshal Carter was not prepared to protect Tucker. Carter decided to try to take Tucker on a boat to another town, though whether this was for Tucker’s safety or the marshal’s own convenience is unclear. 

The story that Tucker ran away from custody also appears to be false and served to further criminalize him. In reality, when the mob came to the docks, marshal Carter was again completely unprepared, and there was no boat there for Tucker to escape in. When they were spotted by the armed mob, Tucker tried to save his own life, fleeing not custody (which he had willingly submitted to earlier) but a murderous mob. Carter most likely could not have protected Tucker from the mob violence, and Carter’s actions indicate he was never inclined to protect Tucker. 

Carter’s sympathies certainly lay with the lynchers, as he not only refused to identify any of the mob but also repeatedly used the n-word to refer to Tucker. Carter testified that he left Tucker—still alive though badly injured—to be hunted by the mob while Carter went to find the coroner. He left a murder in progress. 

The mob closed off the town and set up armed patrols, and Tucker could not escape. He ended up hiding under the wharfs over night, but he was found in the morning under a store by two young boys. Tucker ran after being discovered, only to be shot in the thigh, hitting a major artery, which a doctor at the time said would have killed him in 10 minutes. It speaks to both Tucker’s strength and his fear that he managed to run into a local store, Dean & Co.’s, pleading for help to uncaring ears. Steckel was in the store as a boy and recounts hearing Tucker say, “Lord have mercy on a colored man.” 

But there was no mercy to be had. 

Tucker was shot again in the upper back by another young boy, and yet still he struggled and resisted as the mob continued to attack and terrorize him, his life ebbing. He was thrown into a truck, and they put a noose around his neck and drove him to the site of his alleged assault against Dennis. The doctor at the time said Tucker died on the road, but the mob still lynched his body, as a “public spectacle.” 

This all happened during the day, with nobody hiding their identities. In fact, a local newspaper at the time reported, “Not a masked man was in the [mob] and everything was done in broad daylight.” Despite this, an inquest found his death justified and said it happened “at the hands of parties unknown,” even though it was well known around town who participated in the mob violence. No one was ever arrested. 

THE MYTHS OF LYNCHING 

Tucker’s lynching is not the only lynching in Oregon history, though it is the one that had the documentation that EJI requires. 

Twenty years after Alonzo Tucker’s lynching, another Black Marshfield resident, Timothy Pettis, was found murdered and mutilated in the bay in 1924, leading the NAACP’s Portland chapter to declare, “Marshfield is infested with the Ku Klux Klan.” Oregon is believed to have had the highest per capita Ku Klux Klan membership in the country in the 1920s, and the Klan reached into the highest echelon of city, county, and state government. 

Timothy Pettis’s murder was never solved. 

Dr. Darrell Millner, one of the foremost historians of the western Black experience, cites a number of lynchings of Black people as well as Native Americans in the Oregon territory during the Civil War era. Andie E. Jenson, author of multiple Coos County history books, agrees in his book Law on the Bay: Marshfield, Oregon 1874–1944, reporting a total of four Black men lynched within the state. 

Dr. Millner also cites multiple instances of pseudo lynchings or “practice lynchings” at the Klan’s height in the 1920s. They bore the same structure of an actual lynching: identify a victim, capture and take them to a remote location, then “stringing them up….” The victims would not be killed but told to get out of town or face a real lynching. “That’s part of the lynching record as well,” Dr. Millner explains. 

Tucker’s lynching and lynchings in general are not about punishing the supposed wrongdoing of one person but about terrorizing communities. “I don’t think you leave someone’s body hanging …for several hours if the intent wasn’t to send a message,” Taylor Stewart says. “These were more than just extrajudicial killings; they had a cultural impact, and much of that was to instill fear and to be able to sustain white supremacy in a world without chattel slavery. So lynching was always meant to send a message.” 

Lynchings are often spoken of retroactively, as if they happened under the cover of night, with no knowledge of who was responsible. This is challenged by the actual photos of lynchings, in which one sees in some cases hundreds of white people—posing, pointing, sometimes smiling. This was not something white people were ashamed to be part of. 

Lynchings have always had widespread support from a variety of local and national elements. Law enforcement was almost always complicit, if not in the actual lynching, then by ensuring no one was ever punished for it. 

And the overwhelmingly positive white media coverage—both locally, statewide, and nationally—shows how sanctioned this form of racist terror violence was. The number of articles supporting the mob and vilifying Tucker are truly staggering. Weekly Coast Mail described the lynch mob as “quiet and orderly, and it is safe to say that no such lawless proceeding was ever conducted with less unnecessary disturbance of the peace.” Multiple newspapers described Tucker as a “black fiend” who got the death “he so thoroughly deserved.” 

There has been a thriving Black press in Oregon for 124 years. The New Age, Oregon’s first Black newspaper, covered the murder. The New Age was the only newspaper that not only decried mob rule but advocated for prosecuting the lynch mob so that something like this would not happen again in Oregon. 

One of the biggest myths about lynching propagated at the time was that it was done to protect white women, as Black men were accused of having sexually assaulted them. 

It is important to examine the complexities of race and gender and recognize that white women’s participation by lying about sexual assault by Black men either was about their own self-preservation (at the cost of their lover’s life) in the face of violent white patriarchy or was active participation in a brutally violent system of white supremacy. That is not to say sexual violence allegations are to be doubted; truly, they are underreported, especially for marginalized and oppressed people like women and transgender folks of color. Nonetheless, such allegations have historically been weaponized in service of white supremacy, as in the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955 (for whom the antilynching bill is named). He was accused of flirting with and accosting a white woman, then her husband and friend admitted to brutally mutilating, beating, and murdering him. In a 2017 book, the white woman admitted the allegations were not true. 

In fact, both EJI and Black organizations at the time found Black people (including Black women and Black children) were most likely to be lynched because of economically competing with white people or not showing white people “proper respect.” 

Many folks, specifically white folks, I talked to lamented that Tucker never received a “fair” trial and so we will never know if he is innocent or guilty. Even if Tucker had gone to court, his race would have been far more important than factual evidence in determining his punishment. According to an EJI report, “Neither lynching nor ‘legal execution’ required reliable findings of guilt, and complicit law enforcement officers handed over prisoners to the lynch mob.” 

“In no way do I believe he would have gotten a fair trial,” Stewart says firmly. “He was going to get lynched regardless. The only difference is if it was outside as opposed to inside.” 

A “fair” trial for Tucker was never a real possibility at that time and more than likely not in our own either. The current criminal legal system disproportionately incarcerates people of color, especially Black folks (who make up roughly half of the US prison population despite committing “crimes” at levels commensurate with population numbers of 14 percent). Oregon currently incarcerates Black people at 6 times the rate of white people, which reflects the national average. 

The legal system has been one of the key ways white Oregonians have maintained their dominance. “The things that happened to him [Tucker] over 100 years ago at the turn of 20th century could very well have happened to him at the turn of the 21st century in a slightly less violent form,” says Dr. Millner. 

Stewart says challenging the racist foundations of our legal system today is key to honoring Tucker. “If we were to really remember Alonzo Tucker, we would erase our still existing modern connection to lynching via the death penalty,” says Stewart. 

BLACK IN COOS COUNTY 

Coos Bay’s current demographics mirror the state-wide racial demographics of Oregon: 84 percent white and 3 percent Black, making Coos Bay the whitest community to undertake the Community Remembrance Project, according to Stewart. The reasons for these demographics are rooted in history. 

The Oregon territory (Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and parts of Wyoming and Montana) was engineered to be a racist white utopia, and the white colonizers built into the foundations of this state and region—through policies, practices, laws, ideologies, and culture—white supremacy and the exclusion, containment, and exploitation of communities of color. 

This institutional oppression happened through many different means, like the Oregon Donation Land Act of 1850, which gave away 2.5 million acres of Indigenous land for free to white settlers, building this white supremacist fantasy on top of Indigenous communities and histories. There were three Black exclusion laws passed. The first banned Black people from living in the Oregon territory, criminalizing Blackness, and included the Lash Law, which said Black people would be publicly whipped up to 39 lashes every six months until they left the territory. Oregon was the only state admitted to the Union with a racially exclusionary clause in its constitution. That Black exclusion law language was not removed from Oregon’s Constitution until 2002, despite continuous efforts by the Black community to do so for almost a century. There was also significant opposition in the 21st century from white Oregonians to take the language out. 

So why did Black people come here? Because Black communities are varied, the truth is that there were many reasons. One major one was work. But the promise of work wasn’t ever what it seemed. 

In 1894, dozens of experienced Black West Virginia miners and their families were recruited to work in Coos County coal mines. They were promised five to seven dollars a day, comfortable quarters, and good treatment, according to an 1895 statement by G.W. Anderson, one of the Black miners’ leaders. Instead, when they arrived at Roseburg, they were told they would have to walk more than 60 miles to their final destination, only to find after this long trudge the only shelter offered them was in leaky railroad boxcars. Their pay was at most 90 cents a day, and they found out they had to pay the company for their board and lodging. Working conditions in the wet mines below sea level were hazardous and unsafe. When they rightfully complained to the company, they were accused of trying to start a strike and ordered to pay what they owed and leave. 

Dr. Millner says this treatment of Black workers was not unique, citing Black communities recruited to places like Maxville in Wallowa County to work in the timber industry, and says the best-known example of this exploitation of labor was from World War II in Portland and Vanport shipbuilding. “The presence of Blacks in Coos Bay is just a part of that larger pattern or dynamic of exploitation of Black labor when it is useful or beneficial,” Millner says. “The reason they are not there today, of course, is the same thing always happens when their labor is not needed; they are encouraged in many ways to depart Oregon.” 

The treatment of the remaining Coos Bay Black community after the turn of the 20th century attests that white communities exploited and then brutally expelled Black people when their labor was no longer needed. 

Two days after Tucker was lynched, a local newspaper ran a story under the headline “Run Them Out,” advocating pushing out all Black people in the area through violence if necessary. “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and while the lynching of one n***** would not repair the damage that he has wrought, the removal of the entire colored population would let us all rest easier when our wives are alone.” 

The next year saw less than half as many Black people left in the area. The terrorizing of the Black community was largely successful. 

Once the horrific details of Tucker’s brutalization are known, the question shifts from “Why did the Black people leave?” to “How did any of the Black community find strength and courage to stay in the face of such brutality?” 

That courage is still needed to be Black and live in Oregon today. 

For more than a year, Stewart took the eight-hour round-trip drive to Coos Bay multiple times. And always his father, Trent, was by his side. 

Trent, who worked in inclusion and diversity for almost 20 years before retiring, used the drives down as strategy sessions with Taylor. But more than that, Trent said he went to ensure his son’s safety. When asked how he would have felt about letting Taylor go on his own, Trent just shook his head emphatically, saying, “There was no way, just no way.” 

This highlights the dangers for Black people and other folks of color doing this work around the state. Even as Stewart and his father were going to honor a Black man murdered by white supremacists, they themselves were ever aware of their own vulnerabilities in 2020.

ALWAYS MOVING FORWARD 

According to the EJI Community Remembrance Project, an official EJI marker with historic and educational information is the next step in the process after the soil collection. Originally, the City of Coos Bay would only commit to installing a smaller brass plaque at the base of an unrelated pedestal. 

Despite repeated requests for an interview to multiple officials for this essay, there was no response to get to a full understanding of this decision to divert from the EJI outlined process by not using the larger two-sided marker or committing to install the final monument. OPB reported that City Manager Rodger Craddock (also the former police chief) explained: “The city did that in order not to add insult to injury to the others in this community. Here we have one incident involving Alonzo Tucker, but many incidents for many of our other past ancestors.” 

Instead of shifting blame and responsibility onto other communities of color, the city could have committed to honoring Tucker in a more substantial way and committed to honoring others harmed by racial violence. The initial decision not to follow EJI’s process seemed to speak more to protecting their image than doing the right thing. 

Historically, people in the city held the same priorities. A local newspaper that gleefully reported on Tucker’s murder in 1902 said the biggest concern was the damage to Coos County’s reputation: “Perhaps the worst feature of the affair is the black eye which may be given to this community in the estimation of the outside world.” 

However, the surge of Black Lives Matter protests and organizing has changed the national narrative, as well as the one in Coos Bay. Hundreds have taken part in multiple protests in Coos Bay, including almost 400 in two-day June protests. That a man was arrested for allegedly pulling a gun on these peaceful protesters highlights the ongoing threat of white supremacy, alongside this changing narrative. 

The renewed protests and demands for justice have contributed to a cultural shift, and according to Stewart, the City has agreed to more than the small plaque. Planning continues. 

Stewart feels it’s also vital to have the conversation of Tucker’s murder connected to larger conversations about institutional violence that has been done and is being done to the Black community not just in Coos Bay, but also in Portland. “If we have this conversation about restorative justice in Coos Bay, we would be remiss if we didn’t also talk about restorative justice that has to happen in a city like Portland with a long history of redlining, gentrification, displacement.” He will work with the Oregon Historical Society and other community partners to plan how this will happen. 

THE IMPORTANCE OF ALONZO TUCKER 

Some may ask why Tucker’s case is relevant and useful to society now. What can this teach people about the world today? 

“One of the most important things we have to do if we are to recapture the true history of how whites came to dominate the area, we have to go far beyond the wagon train stories and understand the role violence played in that. Alonzo Tucker is a good gateway for that. His story is a clear representation of the role violence played for whites to become dominant in this area,” Dr. Millner says. 

Stewart agrees and says that this truth-telling about Tucker and the larger history is foundational to any movement forward: “Bryan Stevenson, the Executive Director of the Equal Justice Initiative, says that truth and reconciliation are sequential. And so in order to get that reconciliation we have to first tell the truth about lynching and the truth about our past as Oregonians.” 

The highlight of the Coos Bay event was the soil distribution. Memorial attendees were invited to help transfer the soil from the sites of Tucker’s torture and murder into the two containers, one of which will be sent to Montgomery to be part of their display of soil jars collected from lynching sites across the country, and the other will be used as part of a future Coos History Museum exhibit. 

Even though the majority of those in attendance were from Coos Bay, there was also broader Oregon representation from Portland, Eugene, Medford, Salem, Newport, and beyond. A contingent of students, staff, and faculty from University of Portland attended to support both the cause and their alum Taylor Stewart. Two state senators and one state representative were also present. 

Yuri Hernández Osorio, UP’s Coordinator for Diversity & Inclusion Programs, grew up in Coos Bay and was surprised but heartened that the memorial took place in her hometown. “As a person of color from this community, I was pessimistic about this happening, but I’m glad they are doing this. I’m glad they acknowledged how Alonzo Tucker’s lynching impacts communities of color and how they feel about being here in Coos County.” 

Both off and on stage, there was a strong showing of youth from high schools and the local community college. Particularly powerful was the contingent from Marshfield High School, as the school’s soccer field is the former site of the bridge where Tucker was lynched. 

Part of the reason for that representation is Steve Greif, a trustee on the Coos History Museum Board, who opened and closed the event. Greif, a historian and former high school teacher, said he always included Tucker in his curriculum to prevent the community from forgetting. 

Greif also did the initial soil collection, which was blessed at the memorial by Reverend Israel Jurich of Faith Lutheran Church. Greif made a point of explaining that he gathered soil for the event from three sites. These three sites show the trail of pain and terror that stalked Alonzo Tucker in his final hours. The first was the old City Hall, where the memorial was held. It is where Tucker was arrested and imprisoned. It is also where the white mob of 200 originally came for him. The second batch of soil came from an estuary under the docks, where Tucker spent a horror-filled night hiding from the mob. The final site of soil collection was the site of the bridge where his dead body was hung in front of hundreds and left for hours. 

Stewart recognized this event as an important beginning, but only a beginning. He offered a poignant reflection for attendees as they moved the soil into the two containers: “And so as you place this soil in these jars, ask yourself, ‘How can I pursue reconciliation?’ Ask yourself, ‘How will I be different after today?’” 

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WALIDAH IMARISHA is an educator and a writer. She has published four books and has traveled Oregon for years facilitating programs on Oregon Black history and other topics. Imarisha has taught at Stanford University, Portland State University, and Oregon State University, among others.