17-52 - Sliding Doors - 3 - When Worlds Collide
As I mentioned in the original Sliding Doors post, I became interested in the intersecting lives of Eugene Daniel and Gertrude Stone after discovering they were each buried in separate church cemeteries about 10 miles from here. Other posts:
Sliding Doors - 1 - A Walk Through Two Cemeteries
Sliding Doors - 2 - Prologue
[Note: In researching this story, I was lucky to come upon a compelling honors thesis for the UNC Department of American Studies by Morgan Vickers, The Legacy of a Lynching: Community and Familial Adaptation in the Wake of Racial Trauma (https://doi.org/10.17615/py92-5d12). Any quotes in the text that follow are from that paper. Some of the details in my narrative are obviously my reconstruction and not the fault of Morgan.]
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September 17 wasn't initially a day of any particular importance.
The Daniel family—adults and children—started the day early. Breakfast was basic—maybe cornbread, grits, or leftovers from the previous night's meal. The family headed to the tobacco fields as the first light filtered through the trees. The air carried the earthy scent of tobacco leaves, particularly so since harvest was only a week or two away.
“It was very hard work, and I remember thinking this is something I didn’t want to do for a living. It was very hot but it was a lesson in perseverance and strength and endurance... [T]hat was their primary source of income. They were pretty well off and had a big house. They grew everything themselves. They had hogs, cows and horses. They were a really self-sustaining family and they went to the market for some things and they made their own clothes. The family worked the farm every single day, particularly in the summer, leading up to harvest time in late September.” (Morgan Vickers interview with a Daniel family descendent)
The Daniel children could all read and write - they had been taught by their mother - but the demands of the farm meant that school was not an option. The Daniels family looked up as the Stone children left for school. Gertrude and Ernest had a more relaxed start to their day than the Daniels children. After a few chores, they grabbed their books and headed out the door. As they left, their mother, Minnie, called out, "Straight home after school. We'll be having supper early; your father is going coon hunting with the boys tonight."
Walter Stone had been looking forward to the hunt. It was a chance to get away for a few hours from the drudgery of farm life. The moon played a crucial role. A full moon meant better visibility, while a new moon required extra caution. As darkness settled, the coon hunters gathered their gear. Lanterns, sturdy boots, and trusty dogs were essential companions.
The coon hunters ventured into the woods, following well-worn trails. The forest was alive with sounds—crickets, owls, and rustling leaves. Specially trained coonhounds led the way. Their keen noses detected the scent of raccoons. Handlers followed, listening for the dogs’ barks.
It wasn't long before the dogs picked up the scent. The hounds cornered the raccoon and treed it. Walter and the other hunters followed the barks to locate the tree. The eyes of the coon reflected the light of the lanterns, and a few members of the party who were more agile than the others scaled the tree and used poles to force the coon into a burlap sack. After a few repetitions, the hunters gathered around a campfire to retell stories of the hunt and, truth be told, share a bottle of moonshine.
Back at the homes of the Daniels and Stone families, the darkness came quickly with the sunset at 6 o’clock, and a sleepy calm descended over both homes as the lanterns and candles were extinguished.
It is unclear what happened next. What is clear is that after everyone was asleep, Eugene Daniel walked quietly next door, entered the Stone house, and quickly went to Gertrude's room. He didn't touch her. It is uncertain why Eugene went to her room. According to some accounts, he and Gertrude had a relationship of some sort. Others speculate that Eugene was trying to find the bedroom of a girlfriend who worked as a maid in the Stone home. What is clear is that Gertrude possibly screamed after seeing a visitor in her room, which woke up her mother and brother. Eugene got scared and ran off.
Morgan's thesis summarizes what happened next more than I could ever hope to do.
“It is unclear what time Walter returned home from his hunting trip, but the Stone family, without the protection of the father, didn’t make any efforts to chase the perpetrator or inform anyone of the incident on their own. The newspapers report that when the father returned to his family, they told him about the incident, and he immediately left home once again to inform community police officers. New Hope Township was a small hamlet in Chatham County and thus did not have its own police force. Therefore, Walter had to travel to the county seat of Pittsboro, five miles away, in order to seek the help of law enforcement officials.”
“Several hours later, the dogs ‘were placed on the tracks left by the negro as he left the Stone residence.’ The bloodhounds led the officers, as well as an accumulated mob of ‘indignant citizens,’ along the foot tracks reportedly left by Daniel. After trailing him for ‘some distance,’ the police cornered Daniel and captured him…His reported arrest charge was that he entered the Stone home with the intention of ‘criminally assaulting’ a white girl.”
No one had been hurt in any of this. Yet. But anyone who has read To Kill a Mockingbird knows what would happen next once the Sliding Doors of a black teenage boy and a white teenage girl collided.
At about 2 o'clock in the morning the following day, a group of 50 surrounded the jail in Pittsboro, got the keys to the cell, and dragged Eugene out of town.
“Upon finding a suitable tree with ‘a convenient limb’ on the side of the road near Moore’s bridge, the men fastened an automobile tire chain around the neck of Daniel. In one swift motion, they swung the other end of the chain over the limb of the tree and hoisted the boy. It was not the chain around his neck that strangled the life out of him, however; the mob of men fired round after round at Daniel, ‘fill[ing] his body’ with bullets until he died. The body of Daniel, ‘still dangling from the end of the chain,’ was discovered by members of the greater community at about 10 o’clock in the morning. Newspaper accounts report that over a span of two hours, between several hundred and several thousand people visited the scene of the lynching. They all ventured to the body ‘in automobiles and other conveyances and even on foot, all striving to reach the scene in time to view the body before it could be taken down…’ Pittsboro police officers did not arrive until noon, and thereby dispersed the accumulated crowd.”
It was Sunday morning in a church-going community.
Eugene and Gertrude are buried near here.
