Killian Mann
In November of 1910, Thomas Williams, who acquired the nickname “Black Diamond” during his boxing years, was accused and subsequently arrested on suspicion for the murder of a 10-year-old white child named Marie Smith. This story was heavily covered in local and national papers as a “negro crime” including in the New York Times. While evidence against Williams was circumstantial and other suspects were also questioned, Williams remained the main focus of some townspeople, many in the surrounding towns, and especially, reporters.
Asbury Park had been through several public debates on racial segregation and integration in the years leading up to the arrest of Williams. Bathing debates had been ongoing for about three decades, creating and changing restrictions of when ethnic groups, and particularly African Americans, were permitted to use beaches and boardwalks; the annexation of West Park, an area primarily made up of African Americans, Jews, Italians, and some Irish led to discussions on morality, voting rights, and taxation; and other debates around employment, prohibition, gambling, boarding houses, prostitution, and land ownership. Asbury Park was initially formed as a type of religious refuge or town designed to be “free of vice.”
The developments that took place from November 13-15 in 1910 demonstrate a clear and dramatic example of the “Jim Crow North.” This is a concept that disputes the idea that racism, bigotry, and violence were exclusive to and emblematic of only the American South. As the experience of Thomas Williams illustrates, violent outbursts from the white population in northern towns not only occurred but that the systems of prejudice were well established in northern towns. On November 13, 1910, just after 9 p.m., Thomas Williams was woken up while sleeping on a couch in a dark room by reporter Alvin Cliver, detective David Hankinson, and businessman Randolph Miller. He was subsequently arrested and the boarding house where he lived was searched.
The week before, Cliver had been at home when a neighbor told him and his wife about Marie Smith, a local ten-year-old girl who had been violated and murdered. He then started his investigation by speaking to the only Black man that has been around the family frequently. Williams worked as a handyman for Mrs. Delila Jackson, Marie Smith’s aunt. Cliver sought out Williams and when not satisfied with his account of Wednesday November 11, Cliver began to follow Williams, when Williams did not come to a search meeting Cliver contrived, he cast suspicion on Williams to the police. Cliver’s presence at the arrest of Thomas Williams was premeditated to keep the story to himself and prevent being “scooped.”
Over next two hours, Thomas Williams is interrogated; first by Chief William Smith then lower-level officers of the Asbury Park Police Department. The day following the arrest of Williams, which he arranged, Cliver’s article appeared in The Asbury Park Evening Press. In this article, Cliver asserted William’s guilt, presented circumstantial evidence as fact, and called for a demonstration. This Monday, November 14, 1910, County Sheriff Clarence E. F. Hetrick appointed Detective Minugh as lead interrogator. Minugh arrived early in the afternoon and proceeded to question Williams at length in Chief Smith’s office. At the end of his questioning, Minugh gripped William’s arm as he led him across the building into a dark room across from the basement cells. When a lantern was switched on, Williams was confronted with the mutilated body of Marie Smith. His interrogators demanded Williams swear his innocence, going so far as to force Williams to look the dead child in the face and touch her. Williams slowly placed a hand on her cheek and swore, “I thank god I can say I didn’t do it. I am sorry for her and for her family, but I didn’t do it, so help me god.” He was returned to his cell and Minugh was left doubting William’s guilt.
Throughout the day, as word of William’s arrest spread, a crowd gathered in front of the Police and Fire Station on Mattison Avenue in Asbury Park. Just before 9 p.m., Coroner Purdy received a phone call warning him that a large crowd of men had gathered and walked from Whitesville intent on besieging the police station. Enroute, they robbed a mason’s store taking with them a large sledgehammer, crow bars, and large iron rods. Purdy then called Chief Smith and they put together a hasty plan.
Williams, in his cell, could hear the riot, amassed to an estimated 600 white people reported as the local men and their eldest sons, shouting for the police to release Williams to the rioters. Rioters shouted, “shoot him, lynch him, let us at him” and “Mingo Jack!” Mingo Jack, was a black man hanged in 1885 in Eatontown after being accused of mugging a white woman. Similarly, though the accusations were based on rumors and hearsay, townspeople gathered into a riot, stormed the police station, and hanged the innocent man. Afterwards, the accusations were uniformly proven false. Chief Smith called in all off-duty officers, swore in fire-fighters as temporary guardsmen, handed out weapons to reporters cloistered in a room on the second floor, and prepared to clear the mob. During the confusion, Minugh maintained control of access to Thomas Williams throughout to the disappointment of Alvin Cliver. Cliver followed Chief Smith begging to be given access to Williams and swearing to him that he would secure a confession. He was denied unilaterally.
Before the extra officers arrived, the riot broke through the basement door and nearly reached the gate to Thomas William’s cell. Officers rushed down the hallway and used nightsticks to push out the men. After clearing the hallway, they fanned out of the basement door and, as back-up joined them, officers cleared a half block radius around the station. After, Chief Smith made a speech in which he asked the crowd to go home, promised justice within the law, and made a disclosure that is debated. We know the officer told the crowd Williams would not be transferred that evening in accordance with the sheriff and coroner’s orders. In some reports, the Chief announced that Williams had actually been cleared by way of a verified alibi. This was a lie. Williams, either by not having or reading a watch or by design, was missing an hour and a half from his alibi. Cliver, aware of this, was ready to exploit that. No rioters were arrested or penalized for the attack.
By 12:30 a.m. rain had turned into sleet and snow which, though light, cleared some more of the rioters from the streets. Anxious to avoid another riot and potential danger, Chief Smith decided to go forward with transferring Williams to Freehold. At 12:40 p.m., Coroner Purdy, Detective Minugh, and an unidentified officer led Williams to a car where he was pushed to the backseat floor. Once out of Asbury, Williams was pulled up onto the seat until reaching Freehold between 1:20 and 1:25 a.m. The car took a series of backroads passing through Farmingdale and avoided the roadblocks and groups of rioters stationed along the main roadways. Between the police blockade and the transfer, telephone communications arranged several groups of rioters to stage road blocks and mount an attack on vehicles potentially carrying Williams. The rest of the rioters still involved went to the Freehold train station in case Williams was transferred by railway. Williams arrived in Freehold, the vehicle pulling directly into the basement to ensure his safety. As Williams exited the car, officers took hold of him not to subdue him but because they feared he was going to faint. He was escorted to a cell, briefly questioned again, and left to sleep.
Though he was saved from the mad white mob who sought to lynch him, and eventually exonerated, Thomas Williams’s story contains a few pieces of information we still do not know and some documents have yet to be uncovered to further understand this part of his story. When we are able to secure these documents, I hope to continue to tell his story from that night. This was a significant moment but his life and his journey continued after November 15, 1910. Williams’s story continued when Ida B. Wells, working in New York City, hears of his case but this next part takes us out of Asbury Park.
This is an incident that led to the rise of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) legal defense strategy and the Asbury Park Chapter of the NAACP is one of the earliest chapters organized in the United States (U.S.) as a result. Asbury Park’s NAACP played a pivotal role in the rise of the Civil Rights Movement in New Jersey. The Williams incident surely shaped the continued advocacy of this particular branch of the NAACP which continued to play a major role in Black activism in the region, and the state as a whole, through the rise of the modern Civil Rights Movement in the nation during the 1950s.
This essay was informed in large part by 41 newspaper reports from 1910. If you are interested in these articles, please contact me for a full list.
Killian Mann is a history graduate student in the Department of History and Anthropology at Monmouth University
For Further Reading:
Peter Lucia, The Murder at Asbury Park
Joseph G. Bilby and Harry Ziegler, Asbury Park: A Brief History
Alex Tresniowski, The Rope: A True Story of Murder, Heroism, and the Dawn of the NAACP