Frank Williams
Franklin L. Williams (1875-1905) was an executive of the Southern Clay Manufacturing Company‘s operation in Robbins, Tenn., in the early 1900s. He was murdered in 1905, an incident that forever changed Scott County’s racial demographics.
See Also: Blood & Clay: The Frank Williams Murder (Murders in the Heartland)
Biography
Born Aug. 18, 1875, Frank Williams may have been the son of Jno F. Williams (1832-1875) and Emeline H. Bailey (1837-1919). Jno died in March 1875, before Frank’s birth.
Frank was the youngest of at least five children. His siblings included Margaret Lydia Williams Barnard (1864-1949), John R. Williams (1869-1936), Abe Carson Williams (1871-1930), and Emma Williams (1873-1927). The 1880 census lists two additional children who were older: Elizabeth and William.
The Williams family lived at Hood’s Landing, which was located on the Emory River near Kingston, Tenn.
Professional Life
Williams took a job at the Southern Clay Manufacturing Company’s Robbins Brick Yard around 1902. Newspaper accounts sometimes called him the superintendent of the Brick Yard but more often referred to him as a shipping and receiving clerk. Either way, he was apparently in charge of hiring and firing.
Newspapers at the time of his death spoke of his good character. The Chattanooga Daily Times reported: “Williams was only 29 years of age and had been with the Southern Clay Manufacturing Company for a period of three years. In that time he had won the esteem and respect of his employers and was regarded by them as one of the most reliable men connected with the concern.”
Death
Williams was shot to death in his office on Jan. 12, 1905. According to newspaper accounts, he had fired at least two black employees of the Brick Yard — and perhaps several more. Reasons for their termination of employment varied, with some newspapers saying that the company was simply downsizing, while others said that they were not completing their duties and had been asked by Williams to do so, but refused.
Luther Wilson was the man charged with pulling the trigger, shooting Williams once in the side with a Winchester .38 rifle. His brother, Arthur Wilson, was also charged, as was another man, Jule Henderson. The Wilson brothers were born in Robbins. Jule Henderson was a father of two who was married to the Wilson brothers’ sister, Lillie.
Law enforcement authorities in Scott County had to twice protect the accused men from an angry mob intent on lynching them. The Chattanooga newspaper predicted on Jan. 14, 1905, that the three men would soon be lynched. The next day, the same newspaper quoted a grocer from Chattanooga who was returning home after spending a day in Scott County and predicted that there would be a “wholesale lynching” of black residents of Scott County.
Scott County Sheriff William J. West managed to get the three suspects from Robbins to the county seat in Huntsville without incident, though he hid them in a Huntsville farmhouse instead of in the jail to protect them from the mob. A court hearing was held the next day and they were bound over for trial. On Jan. 15, 1905, West was in Robbins when he learned that another mob was forming, including some of Williams’ friends and family members from Roane County who had boarded a train for Robbins. One newspaper reported that a mob was forming at three separate points. West walked nine miles to Huntsville, spread rumors about where he was taking the prisoners, then set out on foot with them for the railroad in Pioneer, Tenn. The mob was reportedly four miles from Huntsville when West left with the prisoners. They walked through the night, keeping to the woods and off the beaten path, and arrived at the railroad depot the following morning. He put them on a train to Knoxville, Tenn., and housed them at the Knox County Jail.
All three men were later convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Luther Wilson died of pneumonia at a state prison in Nashville in 1909. Arthur Wilson served his sentence at Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Petros, Tenn., and later moved to West Virginia, where he married and spent the rest of his life working in coal mines. Henderson may have served his sentence at Brushy Mountain, as well.
Frank Williams was buried at Ambrose-Williams Cemetery in Kingston, where his parents are also buried.
Aftermath
Although Sheriff West had managed to save Wilson and the other two suspects from the mob, the death of Williams charged racial relations in Scott County. The Chattanooga Daily Times quoted a merchant from Chattanooga who returned to the city after spending a day in Robbins as saying that “wholesale lynchings” were being threatened toward black residents. The historian Esther Sharp Sanderson would write many years later in her book, “County Scott and Its Mountain Folk,” that black residents of Scott County were given two weeks to settle their affairs and move out of the county. Signs were later placed on Highway 27 at the county lines north (TN-KY border) and south (Morgan County line) saying, “N****er, don’t let the sun set on your head,” she wrote.
Census records show that Sanderson’s account was likely true. The number of black residents in Scott County numbered 337 in 1900. By 1910, that number had dropped to 77. By 1920, only seven black residents remained in Scott County. They never returned.
Some who stayed faced violence:
• In 1912, three 17-year-old black boys who were walking the railroad tracks in Robbins were shot and killed, according to news reports.
• Years later, a black man working at the Pearson Hardwood Flooring mill in Oneida was forced to move his family out of the county after a masked mob threatened to dynamite his home.
• In 1930, a group of white men shot holes in tents above the heads of sleeping black men who had been brought to Scott County to work on U.S. Highway 27. The Roberts Paving Co., based in Baltimore, Maryland, had brought in 12 black workers from near Knoxville, and intended to bring in an equal number the following day. According to the Knoxville News Sentinel, reporting on Sept. 2, 1930, the superintendent of the paving company requested that white employees of the company be made deputies, but Sheriff Esau Laxton refused, saying that the superintendent needed to remove the black workers from Scott County to avert trouble. The newspaper reported that there was only one black woman living in Scott County at that time.