Synopsis "The Rail: The Burning of John Henderson"
Nooses in the high school quad, the first legitimate black candidate for the American presidency; such are the polar opposites of race relations in modern day America... On March 13th, 1901, a black section hand with the Cotton Belt Railroad named John Henderson was burned alive for the murder of one Valley Dale Younger, white woman. There were no witnesses to the crime other than her little three year old girl, yet before the story was through at least five separate black men were dead, four different murder weapons were identified, telegraph lines were tapped, trains were stopped, a sheriff's career ruined and a governor thrown out of office. Somewhere between one and ten thousand "upright" citizens watched and even cheered the torture and burning of John Henderson on the courthouse yard, yet when the state and local law enforcement officials tried to prosecute, there were no witnesses to the crime. Such are the facts of this unfortunate footnote in Black History, but what was the truth of the story... THE RAIL is the first book to uncover the events surrounding the unpalatable truths of race relations at the turn of the last century in the southern U. S., from beginning to end, and sheds insight into this shameful period in American history. Through actual newspaper stories, telegrams, and the personal correspondence of those involved, the reader is impelled through the mind of the mob's hysteria in bringing to justice the dastardly Negro murderer of a poor defenseless white woman. No matter that no witnesses ever saw the murder or identified the black man, no matter that the state militia arrived just in the nick of too late or that the husband of the murdered woman might have been the son of the notorious bank robber Cole Younger. A white woman died, a black man was blamed, tied to an upright trolley rail, tortured, and then burned alive one sunny morning in 1901 to the approval of all present and the righteous satisfaction of mob rule. Through the narration of a fictitious Pinkerton agent sent to investigate the matter, the reader will be shown a truth from America's brutal collective past which was never meant to come to light. Perhaps if more such history were to be revealed, we might not still have the problems we have today.... It is for you, the reader, to decide.
