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| B. F. Randolph From Wikipedia |
The most shocking of these murders was that of state senator B. F. Randolph. Senator Randolph was shot to death in broad daylight at the Hodges' Depot train station. His killers are often referred to as Ku Klux Klan members, but here we'll take a close look at who actually participating in the act. We'll see that incident does not fit into the usual image of Ku Klux violence, although it was undoubtably a political murder.
The fact that Randolph was killed at Hodges' Depot is itself noteworthy as Randolph had no real connection to the town. Hodges' Depot (now just Hodges) is located in the northwestern part of the state. Now it is part of Greenwood County, but at the time, Greenwood did not exist, and the area was part of Abbeville County. Randolph was a senator for a county in the Midlands, namely Orangeburg. Randolph had never spent a significant time in the northwestern part of the state. He had come to South Carolina during the Civil War as Union soldier. Like a number of former Union soldiers, he had stayed in the state after being mustered out of the army. He first lived in Charleston, but once Reconstruction started, he became an elected official for Orangeburg.
Randolph was able to rapidly advance in state politics as post-war South Carolina presented him with great opportunities. After Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts (enfranchising Black voters), there was a great need for politicians in South Carolina who could represent newly freed Black South Carolinians, and Randolph was perfectly suited for this role. Born free in Kentucky to Back parents, he had attended Oberlin College, completing the school's college preparatory program and one year of college. After his studies, he had worked as a school principal in Buffalo, New York for a few years before the Civil War broke out and he joined the army. His college education and military experience were rare and valuable political credentials during this time.
Randolph's first major political position was as a delegate to the 1868 South Carolina Constitutional Convention (where delegates revised the constitution in accordance with the Reconstruction Acts). He was then elected to a four-year term as the state senator for Orangeburg County.
The same traits that made Randolph a success in politics also made him into a figure of hatred for conservatives. A reporter for the New York World newspaper called described him as a "thicklipped, lustful mulatto." A number of newspapers within the state gave him the mocking nickname "Rev. Burnt District Randolph." A month before he was murdered, the Charleston Daily News published the following description of a speech he gave at the statehouse:
This allusion to the power of the press [by another senator], kindled the dormant wrath of the Burnt District [i.e. Senator Randolph]. The smoke and flames broke forth in suffocating forty. In fact the Burnt District was in its most flaming condition. Lying rebels and rampant disloyalty were the staples of his irate harangue. But the speech cannot be properly appreciated without some idea of the appearance of the poor devil in the act of uttering it. There he stood, not square, fleshy and saddle-colored as he was familiar to the citizens of Charleston before the renowned adventure that gave him his sobriquet; but long, lank, cadaverous, loosely jointed, his leather colored skin surcharged with bile and clinging dark and discolored to his high cheek bones, his long black coat hanging from his shoulders as if from two pegs, his beard unshaven for three days, a proportionate amount of dirt unwashed, his left hand holding the lapel of his coat, his right army pumping up and down in his favorite gesture which he learned in his boyhood in his efforts to procure the water which he carried on his head in the streets of his native Mud Town. . . . The amount of malice that animates this scarecrow can only be accounted for by supporting the heart (?) to be as hideous as the body.
While this was one of the longer diatribes against him, the general tone and attitude was indicative of his general treatment by the press.
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| Map of Abbeville County From South Carolinians Library |
Background to the Murder
In light of the inflammatory rhetoric published by the newspapers, it is not perhaps not surprising that political violence began breaking out. The new state constitution, which granted Black men a number of political rights including the right to vote, was ratified on April 16, 1868. Prior to that, conservatives hoped that they could defeat attempts to enfranchise former slaves through conventional political means like organizing voters to oppose the newly proposed constitution. Those efforts were soundly defeated. Not only was the constitution ratified, but in late April, an election was held under the new constitution and it resulted in a Republican-dominated state government being elected by that state's Black majority. It was then that conservatives turned to political violence as a means for regaining power.
The first acts of political violence were small-scale threats and violent acts against Republican voters, especially local Black political leaders. The first major political assassination took place on June 4, a little over a month after the new state legislature was elected. That evening, a group men approached the home of a Kershaw County congressman, Solomon G. W. Dill, and then discharged firearms. The senator and another man were killed, and the senator's wife was seriously injured.
The murder occurred during a time of heightened tensions as an election for county offices had been held on the previous day. It is not entirely clear why Congressman Dill was targeted as he is a somewhat obscure figure. He only appeared in the historical record after his 1868 election as a convention delegate. He was a white man in his late forties who had spent his life in South Carolina, much of in Charleston. He appears to have moved to Kershaw to serve in politics. Dill was killed before the state legislature convened, so he must have been killed for his political rhetoric (which was incendiary) and the general offense of being a white South Carolinian aligned with the Republican party.
The next major political murder took place on October 5. Abbeville County's congressman, James Martin, was killed while traveling home by wagon from the village of Abbeville. Three men on horseback overtook the wagon and shot Martin with pistols.
Other than being a member of the Republican Party, Congressman Martin does not seem to have done anything particularly controversial. He was an Irish immigrant who had worked as a merchant in Abbeville before the Civil War. He did not have much of a political record, and he appears to have been killed as a part of a general plan to assassinate the county's Republican legislators. The other legislators survived simply because they took major precautions after Martin's murder. For example, Abbeville's senator, after learning of Congressman Martin's death, slept in the woods for several nights and then disguised himself and traveled by train to the state capitol of Columbia.
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| R. F. Randolph From Library of Congress |
Randolph's Murder
Senator Randolph was a far more prominent politician than Congressman Martin or Senator Dill. That September, he was elected chairman of the Republican's State Central Committee. It was in that capacity he was traveling around the state.
Randolph was well aware of the problems with political violence in the state. The previous month, he proposed a resolution to ask the governor what the legislature needed to preserve the peace, noting that "many lawless acts have recently been committed" and "the former leaders of late rebellion by their journals and public speakers are again advising and urging resistance to civil authority."
Randolph was personally warned about the potential for violence in Abbeville County. After Abbeville's state senator fled to Columbia following the murder of Congressman Martin, he met with Randolph. Randolph had been appointed to make speeches in Abbeville, and the county's senator warned that doing so "would be very dangerous for you."
Despite the warning, Randolph traveled to the county on October 16, only a few weeks after the murder of Congressman Martin. He traveled with Associate Justice Solomon L. Hoge, a prominent Republican. They planned to speak at the village of Abbeville, but before arriving there, their train stopped in Hodges' Depot, so they could switch trains.
As Randolph and Hoge were changing trains, Col. D. Wyatt Aiken, a prominent planter active in regional conservative politics, approached and engaged them in a conversation. He asked if was speaking with B. F. Randolph. After Senator Randolph affirmed that he was, Col. Aiken told him, "You damned son of a bitch, you have no business here." He went on to warn that, if all white men were like him, Randolph would not set foot again in his railroad car. Randolph stood firm and said that he was going to take the train to Abbeville and speak. The conversation then ended with Col. Aiken telling him that, if he did so, he would never see the capital city of Columbia again.
Randolph and Hoge delivered speeches the next day. Hoge left that evening, while Randolph planned to leave the next day for the town of Anderson, where he was scheduled to speak. Unfortunately for him, just as Col. Aiken had threatened, conservatives in Hodges' Depot and the neighboring village of Cokesbury began planning to murder him. That evening in Cokesbury, Henry Nash, a Black man who was running for county commissioner, overhead two white men, Fletcher Hodges and Sam Simmons, discussing their plans for the next day. They not only stated that they were going kill Randolph, but that anyone who wanted to see him killed should go to the depot when the train whistled.
The next day, Randolph boarded the train, and when it pulled into Hodges' Depot, a large group of white men had gathered around the depot. Estimates of the group ranged from about eleven to fifty men. The group included Fletcher Hodges, the man who had planned to kill him the previous night. Also present were two local Black political leaders, Aaron Mitchell and Thomas Williamson, who were there to greet Randolph. Aaron had brought his daughter. Seemingly oblivious to the danger he was in, Randolph grabbed his baggage and then switched trains. As he did so, he began chatting with Aaron and Thomas about routine political matters. After finding a seat on the new train and setting down his personal belongings, he went to the door of his train car, continuing talking to Aaron and Thomas. At that moment, the assassins struck.
Some of the white men at the depot had begun walking up and down the train, looking into the train cars. When Randolph emerged from his car, a number of men drew revolvers and three of them opened fire. Randolph was hit multiple times. Aaron Mitchell was standing less than two feet away from him, and Randolph's blood splashed him in his face. The whole scene was witnessed by Aaron's daughter.
Aaron Mitchell had come armed with a pistol which he drew and pointed at one of the assassins. That assassin bent down to avoid being shot, and the other two pointed their pistols at Aaron, daring him to shoot: "Let him shoot. I will fix him." Aaron put his gun away and returned to the train car. The assassins then began walking away from the train, taking care to pick up their percussion caps as they went. Once they got about 50 yards away, they put their guns away. They then walked to a store owned by James Cochran. When they got close, two men emerged from the store and asked, "Did you get him?" One of the assassins replied, "By God, we have got him." They then got on horses and rode away.
After the men left, Aaron Mitchell ran over to inspect Randolph and found him dead. While he was inspecting the corpse, Fletcher Hodges (who had spoken about murdering Randolph on the previous day) came over and asked, "What is this?"Aaron responded, "They have shot this man." Fletcher asked Aaron who had shot him and got an evasive answer, "It is not worth while to ask me; the men are known and there is not a man here but knows them." Fletcher responded with an implicit threat: "Well, you had better mind how you talk; you don't know whether they are known or not."
After the exchange, Fletcher walked over to the Randolph corpse and exclaimed, "Yesterday you boasted, and thanked your God, that negro blood run through your veins, but now it is running on the ground." Upset at the remark, Aaron began to exchange words with Fletcher, but he was taken aside by another one of the white men, Langdon Conner. Langdon advises him, "Aaron, you come away from here and shut your mouth or some of them will hurt you." Aaron followed the advice, but before leaving, he tried to take some of Randolph's personal effects. However, a third man, Pompey Davis, stopped him and told him to leave it. Finally, Aaron gathered a group of four Black men to move Randolph's corpse, but the white men in the crowd would not let him, so he got in his train car and returned home.
Randolph's corpse was left lying on the ground overnight. The next day, a group of men placed him in a coffin, and it was sent by train to Columbia. On Sunday October 18, funeral services for Randolph were held at the Bethel A.M.E. Church. He apparently was given a cemetery burial, but it unclear where exactly he was buried. In 1871, a new cemetery, Randolph Cemetery, was named in his honor, and was supposedly reburied there, but no headstone or burial plot has been identified.
Closing thoughts
At the start of this post, I observed that Randolph's murder is often referred to as one of the first incidents of Ku Klux Klan violence, but a close look at the event shows important differences from Ku Klux Klan violence. The incident differed from typical Ku Klux Klan violence in that the target was a statewide political leader, rather than a local leader. Moreover, the murder had none of the theatrics of typical Ku Klux attacks: the murderers didn't wear any of the elaborate disguises or pretend to be supernatural creature. They also didn't make any effort to disguise their actions. Not only did the murder occur in broad daylight in front of a large audience, but it was publicized in advance, and political supporters were invited to show up. In a later post, we'll take a closely look at the assassins, and this will further highlight the nature of the murder. The assassins were well-known local criminals who were given "a roll of money" for killing.
The murder of B. F. Randolph is unusual for an additional reason. He actually received a measure of justice. One of the assassins was arrested, imprisoned, and then later killed by law enforcement after escaping jail. While imprisoned, he gave testimony about the killing. This, together with personal records of Col. Wyatt, provides an unusually close look at murder from the perspective of the perpetrators.
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| The daily phoenix. August 21, 1869 |
Sources
1) "A Brace of Carpet-Baggers–The Men who would Rule South Carolina. The Orangeburg news, August 8, 1868, p. 1.
2) "State Republican Convention." The Anderson intelligencer. [volume], September 16, 1868, p. 2
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