Early Saturday morning, on December 10, 2021, several tornadoes and severe weather caused major damage in multiple cities and states. A tornado ripped through a candy candle factory in Mayfield Kentucky and an Amazon facility in Illinois, also a nursing home in Arkansas, along with numerous homes and buildings in these states were destroyed.
The candle factory in Mayfield, Kentucky had the highest casualties, with a projection of 50 up to possibly 100 people may have perished. I remembered reading about Mayfield, and its racial history, and I found that this town, since the early 1820s, has a dark past when concerning Black Americans.
In the 2020 census, the total population of Mayfield is 10,017. Mayfield’s racial composition is the following:
White: 63.75%
Black American: 12.03%
Latino American: 17.89%
Others: approx.: 6%
Unfortunately, the high casualties at the candle factory will probably be mostly minorities (Black and Latinos).
Getting back to the history of this city, Mayfield Kentucky was the center of the Jackson purchase, an eight County region purchased by Andrew Jackson from the Chickasaw people in 1818. Although Kentucky became a state in 1792, this western part of the state was recognized in 1823 as part of the state of Kentucky. After the Northern Railroad in 1858 connected Mayfield to Memphis and New Orleans, did the city begin to grow. The Clothing manufacturing became the main industry in Mayfield for the next hundred years. The town also was a major market for loose leaf tobacco sales.
During the Civil War, the Jackson Purchase, including Mayfield, strongly supported the confederate cause. It has been called “Kentucky’s South Carolina”. There was a convention held in Mayfield to adopt resolutions condemning President Abraham Lincoln for waging a bloody and cruel war against the south, to urge the governor to resist union forces, and praising him for refusing Lincoln’s demands for soldiers. After the Mayfield Convention, there was talk of succession and a provisional Confederate government of Kentucky was to be initiated.
During and after the Reconstruction, there was considerable white violence against blacks in the county and in Mayfield. In December 1896, four black men were lynched in the city.
After a prominent black man was lynched a few days before Christmas, whites became fearful after hearing that blacks were going to retaliate. There were reports that up to 250 armed African-Americans were seeking revenge for the lynching of African-Americans, and for the continual white capping of African-American families. (Whitecapping is a violent lawless movement among farmers that occurred specifically in America during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was originally a ritualized form of enforcing community standards, appropriate behavior and traditional rights. However, as it spread throughout the poorest areas of the rural South it took on a distinct anti-black characteristic.)
White women and children in Mayfield were ordered off the street by 6:00 p.m. Homes were barricaded. A dispatch was sent to nearby towns, asking for a reinforcement of white men, and guards were posted at the railroad station. When a report arrived stating that African Americans were also arming themselves in Paducah, KY, which was close by, the fire bell was rung in Mayfield and a defense was positioned in the public square to await the attack. Shots were fired at three other African Americans. Hundreds of shots were fired into buildings and into the trees. Four homes were burnt down. By Christmas Eve, the threat was over, and the reinforcements were sent home. A mass meeting was called, and a petition signed by more than 100 African Americans asked for peace between the races.
During the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, Mayfield’s local schools were slow to integrate, but they finally did so without violence. The “Mayfield Ten”, ten black students from the segregated Dunbar High School, were allowed to register in 1956 at all-white Mayfield High School. At the height of the Jim Crow era in the 1890s, Mayfield had witnessed terrible violence based on race. Since 1900 there were twenty schools in Graves County dedicated to serve black students though few graduated from high school. The “Dunbar Colored School” (offering primary grades only) had started first in a private building, and in 1908 had joined with the city schools in order to receive state funding. Dunbar High School started in 1921 in a new building built from contributions from the Rosenwald Fund (a foundation established by Julius Rosenwald, one of the owners of Sears and Roebuck). Many Rosenwald schools in western Kentucky were poorly maintained and supplies were meager. The federal court order in May 1954 forced schools in western Kentucky to integrate, and state officials worked to comply, though many local administrators refused. Kentucky Civil Rights Act of 1966
Kentucky became the first state in the South pass a civil rights law, when it passed The 1966 Kentucky Civil Rights Act. The Act prohibits discrimination in employment and public accommodations based on race, national origin, color, and religion. It also disallowed housing discrimination, however, the only state senate member to vote against it was Graves County, where Mayfield is located.
In 2000, Mayfield was shocked by the murder of Jessica Currin, an 18 year old local black teen resident. The case was finally closed nearly seven years later with the help of a amateur investigator originally from Chicago, Susan Galbreath and Tom Mangold, a British journalist. The city police, nor the Kentucky state police showed little to no interest in this brutal murder, most likely due to the victim being a black female. It took an amateur investigator and a British journalist to drum up national and international interest for this case to be solved, seven years after the murder.
One final note about Mayfield; In 2021, Mayfield resident Clayton Ray Mullins was arrested and charged in the assault of D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer during the January 6, 2021, United States Capitol attack. Mullins and his home city of Mayfield were also subjects in a New York Times feature about the Capitol attack (there were several people from Mayfield who were involved in the Capitol attack). Mullins is accused of assaulting a Metropolitan Police officer at the Capitol during the riot, allegedly dragging the officer down the stairs at the lower west terrace tunnel entrance of the Capitol Building. The officer had to be taken to a hospital, due to deep a cut to his head that required two staples. Mullins was arrested Feb. 23 on charges including a charge of assaulting, resisting or impeding officers, obstructing law enforcement during civil disorder, engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or on restricted grounds).
Sources:
Mayfield Race War: https://nkaa.uky.edu/nkaa/items/show/1558
Mayfield, Kentucky History: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayfield,_Kentucky
The Mayfield Ten: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayfield_Ten
The Historical Memory Recovery Channel 