BLACKENING WHITE FACES TO OBSCURE IDENTITY
The reader is probably doing a double take with the title. Take a look at our latest StoryMap on the phenomenon of Blackened Faces, and you’ll better-understand the title. What does it have to do with Howard County lynching history?
Nicholas Snowden was reported to have been lynched in the county in September 1885. In one news report, the county jail warden was reported to have said that men with “veils” had entered the jail and pulled Snowden out. But then he kept saying they had been “masked.” A veil is not a mask. The following quote was attributed to him: “There was no light in the jail save the lamp I took down with me to open the door. This the masked men had taken from me and carried upstairs. I was therefore in the dark save for the light from the corridor above where the men were in waiting before the cell of Snowden.” So, how much would he have been able to see with such limited lighting?
The local sheriff’s statement in the first The Sun newspaper report contained: “I had no knowledge of the affair until I was aroused… by the warden of the jail.” Then: “I have heard that both white and colored men were in the lynching, but I am inclined to the belief that all were colored.” He also reported that masks were worn, but if he wasn’t at the jail and had no knowledge until the warden had come to get him when the men had left, how did he know?
The article went on to report that: All the prisoners in the jail agree that the lynchers were colored men. It is stated, however, that some white men were present, standing aside while the colored men brought Snowden out. Who said these things since they weren’t in quotes?
A subsequent newspaper article reported that the jailer said they were all “colored, as he could see parts of their faces and hands and could tell by their voices.” It was written that Snowden was married and had granddaughters.
The Townsend Cook lynching happened earlier that year in June. It was reported in The Sun of June 3 that “Some of the people say that the lynchers had a fair representation of men of color among them. This, however, cannot be substantiated, as the whole arrangement for the deadly errand was so carefully planned and the participants so cleverly hidden by black calico masks, which enveloped face and neck, that those with whom they had dealings are unable to identify them.” It was also written that: “The balance of opinion seems to have it that Howard County men did the lynching.” So, Howard County men may have removed a man from a jail in nearby Carroll County and then lynched him all while wearing masks that had people thinking they were Black men just a few months before Nicholas Snowden was lynched by people similarly described??
An examination into the history of using blackened faces was necessary to do. The truth may never be known, but our nonprofit has made the decision to NOT leave Nicholas Snowden out of the examination into racial terror lynchings. Had a proper investigation been done in 1885 into his murder, we’d have more to go on to make the determination as to whether lynched by a white mob or a Black one allowed into the jail by the warden and never pursued for justice by the government people who had the responsibility to ensure he’d have his day in court that he never received.