Their Majesties the Mob

Abstract

WHEN Hubert Howe Bancroft was turning out the thirty-nine volumes that constitute his massive history of the Pacific states of North America, it seemed to him appropriate to devote two full volumes-an aggregate of more than 1,500 pages-to what he called the popular tribunals. Bancroft has been criticized for many things, but not for this emphasis upon the committees of vigilance. They are recognized as one of the most characteristic institutions of the pioneer period. In 1956 the centennial of the most famous of these bodies, San Francisco's Second Committee, passed with practically no local observance. True, a laudatory book was published and immediately excerpted in the historical magazine of widest circulation, American Heritage. For scholars this publication was partly balanced by the appearance of a dispassionate biography of the most spectacular antagonist of this great committee, Judge David S. Terry. But what may well be regarded as a more significant observance of this centennial took place in Tennessee, Texas, and Kentucky. In September, at Clinton, Tennessee, a dozen Negroes enrolled in the high school, and the first day passed without incident. Then a stranger from Washington, D.C., began to harangue on the street corners, and soon a crowd was threatening Negroes and smashing their cars. The next day citizens were out en masse in front of the school and the Negro children could get in only under escort of national guardsmen with riot guns and fixed bayonets. Oliver Springs had a similar outburst of violence, with dynamite exploded near Negro homes, and reporters and cameramen hustled out of town at gun point. For a couple of days it was touch and go whether the guardsmen would be able to control or would themselves be run out of town.