Slow Sheriffs and Sham Investigations
On July 17, 1923 at 8:30pm Joe Berry, a white section hand on, and who lived two houses down from , the T & P Railroad in Denton, was beaten while his wife and children attended church at Mission Baptist. The flogging was done with a horse whip by six robed and hooded men who were walking along McKinney street to the Barber Grocery store and turned back after seeing Mr. Berry in his yard. The attackers put a handkerchief over Berry’s mouth, brought him to the space between his home and Mr. Barber’s home (directly to the west), and whipped him “seven or eight times.”
On the same night, law enforcement was informed of the brutality at 11:00pm. Deputy Nick Akin received the report as he was preparing to go off duty, reported the event to R. M. Huffines who, in turn, called Sheriff Swinney. When pressed the following morning on the inaction of the Sheriff’s Department, Swinney explained that he was “sick when the call came and could not have done any more than he could do Wednesday morning.”
Swinney, Akin, and County Attorney Boyd conducted the investigation. When interviewed, Berry’s neighbor J. M. Barber said he heard nothing and was home all evening. In a statement Wednesday afternoon, County Attorney Boyd said the investigators could not find any neighbors who heard or saw the attack. When Swinney and Boyd were finally able to interview Mr. Berry, they “found no marks from a whip.” Within three days of the attack, the Berry family moved from their home on McKinney street to Arizona.
Paul Merritt, a witness for accused white rapist Barney Cloninger, was beaten by men wearing black masks and coveralls. At the Imperial Klonvocation in late 1922, five months earlier, Imperial Wizard Hiram Evans made a declaration which limited the use of Klan regalia to official acts (parades, meetings, initiations). Five months later, Paul Merritt, a witness for accused white rapist Barney Cloninger, was beaten by men wearing black masks and coveralls. This choice of outfit was notably different from traditional, white, Klan garb but nevertheless coordinated and conveyed the same anonymous message. In reference to the actions of these “white cappers” in Denton County, Sheriff Swinney stated, “I am confident it was done by men outside of Denton County.”
At 11:30pm on March 30, 1923, Merritt and several family members left Denton for Pilot Point and were stopped on Elm Fork Bridge. There, Merritt was abducted and driven ten miles back toward Denton. He was taken out of the car and through woods on A. D. Turner’s land where they met up with two other cars of men who all beat him severely. After the beating, a man referred to as “doctor” was asked by one of the masked men if he had the “tools for an operation.” The doctor replied that he would not perform it and would rather die than see it happen to this man. Following the incident on Elm Fork Bridge, Merritt was dropped off west of the city square in Denton blindfolded and bound. When he got into town, he stopped for a drink and then walked to his hotel. Merritt reached his hotel around 12:30am and was greeted by a doctor, called by law enforcement officers who were aware of the attack.
These two incidents, in addition to the two disappearances, call into question the close relationship between the law enforcement of Denton County and the Ku Klux Klan. However, a survey of historical literature on the Ku Klux Klan argues for a consensus on that previous question. The involvement, or at least passive approval, of the Sheriff’s Department and City Police was an essential component of extralegal violence. Without this unholy alliance, the Klan would not have been able to operate with impunity. In the state of Texas, during the second rising of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, only three Klansmen were prosecuted for their involvement in extrajudicial violence. Charles Alexander makes this case in Crusade for Conformity stating, “During its violent phase, the Texas Klan had enlisted law enforcement officials to avoid interference in its clean-up activities, and as a result had eluded prosecution in most areas of the state.”
The principle of Klannishness dictated that all contracts were given to Klansmen with preference, therefore, when Sheriff Goode hung up his spurs and went into the public sector as a road contractor, his Denton County contracts affirm a relationship with the local Klan. This same principle can be applied to the relationship between Sheriff Swinney and Alvin Owsley who acted as his campaign attorney in 1922. Both Swinney and Goode followed textbook Klan procedures as Sheriff, with Goode as the unseen accomplice and Swinney as one with active knowledge. This is typified through their times in response to action by the Klan and by the purging of Nick Akin, a member of the Chamber of Commerce, from the Sheriff’s Department in 1923.
City Marshall Joe Young and County Attorney Boyd were universally involved in Klan-related violence and its subsequent “investigation.” Neither Young nor Boyd ever found evidence of wrongdoing sufficient for charges against members of Klavern 136. Judge Pearman, similarly, found himself absent in each case -- just long enough for public concern to abate. In the Fall of 1925, Pearman announced that he had diarrhea and would be taking a leave of absence for three months. During this time, he refused to resign and allow another justice to take his place, but instead, relied upon a rotation of local attorneys who took turns adjudicating cases until his return. During the tenure of District Judge Pearman, criminals were unable to plead guilty and receive a suspended sentence through normal means. Fines and bonds were heavy under Pearman (almost doubly so for defendants of color) and thus, even if he was not a member of the Ku Klux Klan, he certainly did their bidding from 1920 through 1925.
From 1920 until the close of Sheriff Swinney’s term in January 1925, the Ku Klux Klan had membership in important positions in the Justice System of Denton County. James Goode, William Swinney, Joe Young, Ben Boyd, and Charles Pearman were, at best, passive participants in Klavern 136 during the second wave of the Ku Klux Klan. This explains why it was unnecessary to assault a jailer when the Klan took prisoners as victims for extralegal violence and why there were no witnesses within the jail when the Sheriff’s entire family lived between the front door and the cell doors. The complicit and explicit actions of Sheriffs Goode and Swinney explain why evidence of whippings, floggings, and lynchings were never found -- not because those events did not occur in Denton County; but rather, because those crimes were sanctioned by the Denton County Justice System in the Jim Crow Era.