It used to be that a stranger in our town was never asked why he had left the place he had been before or how he happened to come to Oklahoma. That was in the early days. After a while it got so that it was just the other way around. A new man in town was expected to get about introducing himself to people. Then they could talk over local conditions and where he had been located before and how much better he liked our town.
John Parnell didn’t do that, and that was why people were suspicious of him from the beginning. They began to wonder what his game was the moment they saw him hanging his attorney’s shingle out by the First National Bank Building stairway. And they never did find out for sure.
He was the only lawyer in town with a college degree. The men who helped carry up the boxes of law books that came by freight a week after he had set up in town saw his diploma, written in Latin, hanging on the wall. He roomed and boarded at the Widow Warburton’s, and the widow did some spying on him: but she never did get anything worth telling.
The first year he lived in our town he didn’t do anything but sit up in his office reading books. The telephone office was in the building opposite. Mabel McKindricks, the day telephone central, could look across from her switchboard and see him, with his feet up on his desk, reading.
The next year was election year and John Parnell came out as a Republican and became an active party worker. Every one supposed then that he would run for the county attorney nomination. But he didn’t ask the county central committee to be put on the ticket, which was all the nomination amounted to. Instead, he antagonized the organization by going around urging niggers to register and vote.
Parnell began to work up a practice among the niggers. He would defend them in the J.P. court and the county court. People were surprised to find that he was a good lawyer. He began to get acquittals for nigger Choctaw-beer makers and for gamblers. Before that they had always pleaded guilty and paid their fines.
People knew then that John Parnell was a niggerlover and after that no one had anything to do with him. But the niggers kept going in a steady stream up to his office and he had a big practice among them. The ones who could afford to, the beer-makers, paid him well.
One day Lawyer Parnell came into the Economy Drug Store. He bought all his cigars at the Economy, and Doc Bascombe was polite to him because he was a good customer. Doc Bascombe was over behind the soda fountain when the lawyer came in.
“May I have a glass of ice water?” said John Parnell.
“Yes, sir!” said Doc.
Doc didn’t see the little nigger boy who had come in with the lawyer until the nigger-lover turned and handed the glass of water down. Doc was so flabbergasted he didn’t say a word. After Parnell and the pickaninny had gone out, Doc took the empty glass back of the prescription partition and smashed it. He was so mad he stood in the back of his drug store for a half an hour calling Lawyer Parnell everything he could lay his tongue to.
There was a Republican landslide that year, but John Parnell didn’t even make a bid for the post office. People couldn’t understand what the man hoped to gain, coddling the niggers like that. He was making some money defending nigger bootleggers and gamblers, it was true, but he didn’t have any standing in the community and no white person would speak to him.
Meanwhile, the effects of his advice to the niggers were becoming noticeable. Instead of grinning when a white person swore at them they were beginning to be surly about it. One day some small white boys down by Devro’s grist-mill threw corn cobs at some little nigger boys, and the nigger boys didn’t run as they had always done before. They threw cobs back at the white boys. Trouble was in the air. All kinds of rumors were afloat.
Every one knew that the nigger-lover was the cause. One day he came into the Economy Drug Store and had a prescription filled. A few minutes later he came back again. Doc Bascombe was standing over by the cigar counter rolling dice for cigars with some customers. John Parnell pulled a paper out of his pocket and smoothed it out on the green felt dice pad.
“Mr. Bascombe,” he said, “I have here a letter from the Ku Klux Klan advising me to leave town while I am able. It is written on Klan stationery, but the typewriter used was the same one you use to type your prescription labels. Now, the Klan can do as it sees fit about this, but I’m telling you now that if I am subjected to any outrage, if I even so much as get another threatening letter, I’m going to kill you like I would a mad dog.”
Doc Bascombe had been standing there all the time rattling the dice slowly back and forth in the leather cup. His face was very white. He moved his mouth and said “Uh-uh-uh.” Lawyer Parnell turned around and walked out.
The following Saturday there was a medicine show at the corner of Broadway and Main. The sidewalk was so crowded people couldn’t get through. Emory Givens came walking up Broadway with his sweetheart, Lois Schaefer. As they were trying to get through the throng by the show a half-witted nigger boy named Sherman Pruitt jostled into Lois. The boy mouthed something and tried to back away, but a white farmer grabbed his arms and held him while Emory Givens began smashing his face. About that time Jud Spafford, the city marshal, came elbowing through the crowd. He waited until he thought the nigger boy had enough. Then he took him up the street to jail.
Sunday morning Black Mamie Pruitt came around to the back door at the Widow Warburton’s and asked to speak to Mr. John Parnell. Black Mamie was a nigger wench who sold Choctaw beer and ran a bawdy house over on the other side of the M. K. & T. tracks.
“Mr. John,” said Black Mamie, “they’s got my boy in the cooler and his face is all smash up and they won’t let him see nobody. Mr. Jud Spafford run me away from the window. My boy say he ain’ had no water since Sad’dy noon and he’s all het up with a fever. Mr. John, suh, cain’t you do no thin’ about hit?”
The nigger-lover got his hat and went with Black Mamie to hunt up the city marshal. When they found him Lawyer Parnell said, “What’re you holding this boy for?”
“Now don’t you go tryin’ to get hard with me,” said the city marshal. “I told Mamie and told Mamie that she had to keep that black idiot of her’n off the streets. Hell, I ain’t holdin’ him. I don’t want him in my jail. They ain’t no one to wait on him, and I ain’t going to run no errands for a goddam nigger. I cain’t stand his nigger stink. If ole Mamie will take him home I’ll turn him out now”.
Jud went on around to let the boy out. Mamie followed along behind. On the way Lawyer Parnell turned in and went up to his office. He stood at his window looking out over the alley back of the First National Bank Building. It was Sunday morning and everything was very quiet after the big Saturday.
John Parnell looked down and saw Jud Spafford unlock the jail and lead out Sherman Pruitt. The marshal locked the jail again, said something to Black Mamie, and walked off. Black Mamie and Sherman stood looking after him. Then Mamie grabbed her son and tried to hold him, but he broke away. The half-wit ran pigeon-toed a little way toward Jud and shouted something after him. Jud turned around and the youth crouched, stuck out his swollen, bloody face, and pushed out his tongue. Jud came back with swift strides. He shouted, “What did you call me, you —?”
The nigger half-wit stood there looking down. Jud whipped out his pistol and shot him. The boy fell. Old Black Mamie Pruitt was too fat to run. She came waddling up and grabbed the pistol.
Lawyer Parnell, who had been looking at all this from his office window, ran down the building’s back steps. Before he got there Jud had wrenched his gun out of the nigger wench’s hand and had cold-cracked her with the butt. A nigger cook named Mac Carmer propped open the back door of the Broadway Café and took careful aim with an automatic. Jud Spafford stood there pumping bullets into the two niggers.
Nigger-lover Parnell came running up. At the same moment Mac Carmer, the nigger cook, began shooting. Lawyer Parnell stopped three bullets and lurched forward. Jud Spafford ran for cover.
That was the way the race riot started in our town. It went on all that Sunday. Four white men and sixteen niggers were killed. Those who picked up the bodies that afternoon found John Parnell lying face down with his lips against the cheek of Black Mamie, the nigger harlot.
TWEET: From the book Oklahoma Town, Ayer Company Publishers, 1931 | George Milburn (Coweta, Oklahoma, 1906 – New York, 1966) became a reporter for The Tulsa Tribune at the age of seventeen and in 1929 he started publishing short stories in several well-known magazines. His two early collections, Oklahoma Town (1931) and No More Trumpets (1932) were critically appraised, but unfortunately for him his novels weren’t as successful; so he was soon forgotten and found a job as a traffic officer in New York, where he died at 60.