Color was a problem for my Coker-Stinnett family. They lived in the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas and Missouri. They had a mixed ethnic heritage. Though they were related to the pioneering families of northwest Arkansas, they were undoubtedly known to have that "one drop" that defined Blackness in America.
Two young men, a Coker and a Stinnett, were lynched within three years of each other for assaulting white women. Both cases made the national news in the early 1900s. Fred Coker, Horace Duncan and Will Allen were lynched on Easter Sunday 1906 in Springfield, Missouri. The National Guard was called to restore order. Technically the 1909 case of Charley Stinnett was not a lynching because he made it to trial, was convicted and legally executed in Harrison, Arkansas. There was no Guard called to stop the mob that ran Black people out of Marion and Boone counties. My families scattered.
I suspect these events contributed to John and Lizzie Stinnett's decision to leave their place on the color spectrum behind them. After all their family probably could pass for Native American and/or European at first glance. But they wouldn't be able to do that around people who knew them or their relatives. I'll never know who was the first to step across the line. Did brother Dick Stinnett come visit and say "Hey, I've been living in Pittsburg, Kansas and everybody thinks I'm white. Come on over!"
Would the notion of race have mattered to them at all had they been on equal social and economic footing with even the lowest White person? And what about the family members left behind? Was there already a disconnection that facilitated further separation? They obviously stayed in touch with some folks because my grandfather visited them. He may have been the last family member to do so.
John Stinnett and Lizzie Coker Stinnett:
Related posts: Hiding in Plain Sight - Part 1, Hiding in Plain Sight - Part 3
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