The murder of Willis Greene
Willis Greene was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Not “wrong place, wrong time” in the sense that he did anything wrong. Greene was just an old man walking the road.
At least, the stories that have been handed down through the years, word-of-mouth, suggest he was old. Truthfully, we know almost nothing about Willis Greene — except that he was black, and that he was murdered on July 12, 1923, and that he was buried by the side of Big Ridge Road west of Oneida, almost where he fell.
Wrong place, wrong time meant that it wasn’t wise for a black man to be walking a road in an isolated part of Scott County in the Summer of 1923 — especially not by himself.
It wasn’t always that way. Just a few years before Willis Greene was killed, there were hundreds of black people living in Scott County. In fact, there were hundreds of black people living in southern Scott County alone, where they made up a sizable portion of the labor force.
But things changed with racial violence in the early 1900s. A white man was killed. The historian Esther Sharp Sanderson recalled, in her book County Scott and Its Mountain Folk, that the black people living in Scott County were given two weeks to liquidate their assets and leave the county.
“There was a big sign on the road at the Kentucky state line and at the entrance at Morgan County: ‘N***er, don’t let the sun set on your head,’” Sanderson wrote. “The Negroes rarely ever passed through. If they did, they made haste to get through.”
That’s why Sherman Marcum — a farmer who lived on Big Ridge Road — warned Willis Greene not to continue walking the way he was walking, heading north towards Kentucky.
But Greene didn’t heed Marcum’s warning. Wherever he was headed, he intended to get there.
Greene only got as far as Foster Crossroads. There, he ran into Daley Musgrove. Born Daley Owens Musgrove, folks knew him as “Dale.” And on that summer day in 1923, Dale Musgrove — a World War I veteran — killed old Willis Greene.
As told to the Knoxville News Sentinel in 2006 by brothers Charles and Wallace Marcum — both of whom have since passed — Musgrove thought, or at least said he thought, that there was a reward for Greene’s capture. And, so, he intended to get him back to Oneida, where he would summon the law and collect his reward.
As the Marcum brothers — who were Sherman Marcum’s grandsons — told News Sentinel columnist Fred Brown, Musgrove was on a horse, beating Greene with a hickory stick to “drive” him back to Oneida.
Up out of the holler and onto Big Ridge they went, a man eyeing reward money on his horse, an old black man in front of him, and the horseman apparently beating him every step of the way.
When they got to the top of the ridge, along a stretch of Big Ridge Road that hugs the bluff line and has long been called “The Narrows,” Greene collapsed on the side of the road. And Musgrove shot him dead.
Hillery Marcum — Sherman Marcum’s son, and Charlie and Wallace Marcum’s father — was headed home from delivering a load of lumber to Oneida when he came across Greene’s dead body on the side of the road. With him was Esau Foster, who lived nearby at Foster Crossroads. The two men decided to spend the night on the site to prevent wild animals from getting to Greene’s body, the Marcum brothers told the News Sentinel.
The next day, the Marcum family made a casket out of yellow poplar lumber. Hillery Marcum, his wife Maude, their teenage daughters Aileen and Louise, and Maude’s brother Bud Watters rode in the wagon — as did Wallace, who was only four months old at the time. Charlie was not yet born; he was born in 1926.
Greene was buried by the side of the road. The Marcum family made a headstone out of concrete, onto which they inscribed the words “Negro Willis Greene.”
For most of the rest of their lives, Wallace and Charlie Marcum took it upon themselves to keep Greene’s gravesite free of undergrowth. Wallace Marcum died in 2008, and Charlie Marcum died in 2014.
Today, you can still find the old headstone placed by the Marcums, along with a funeral home marker and some faded artificial flowers, on private property about 50 yards off Big Ridge Road. The grave is located on the big curve about 1.25 miles west of Atomic Lane.
History doesn’t tell us how Dale Musgrove was linked to Greene’s death — or, for that matter, how anyone knew who Willis Greene was.
But, one way or another, Musgrove was identified as a suspect. He was arrested, stood trial, and convicted of first degree murder. He was sentenced to 25 years of hard labor.
Musgrove appealed his sentence, but it was upheld by the Tennessee Supreme Court. He was originally imprisoned at Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary in Petros, but was later moved to a prison in Nashville.
At some point between 1930 and 1932, Musgrove was released from prison. He was imprisoned when the 1930 census was taken, but died in Scott County on July 2, 1932. It was just 10 days short of the ninth anniversary of Willis Greene’s death. Ironically, Musgrove was shot to death. His death certificate simply notes, “gunshot wound.”
Musgrove was 38 at the time, and was the father of at least two children. He was buried at Foster Crossroads Cemetery.