Lynching of Winston Pounds
Winston Pounds was an African-American man who was lynched by a mob in Wilmot, Arkansas, on August 25 or 26, 1927.
Pounds was hanged after being accused of breaking into and entering the house of a white man, and then allegedly assaulting his wife. An armed mob of fifty white men took him from the sheriff and his deputies, and hanged him a mile and a half away from town. A Black newspaper, however, noted that there had been bad blood, and that the white man, J. W. McGarry, had been seeking revenge on Pounds because Pounds's father had gotten the best of McGarry's father years earlier. There was no other evidence other than bloodhounds supposedly following the alleged assailant's tracks.
Description
According to the US Census, Winston Pounds Jr. was born to Winston and Florence Pounds, farmers, around 1906. The lynching involved him and a white man called J. W. McGarry. Pounds was described in one newspaper as "a good young man, who was never known to be in any kind of trouble with anyone." He was 20 years old at the time of his murder.Alleged attack
As Nancy Snell Griffits notes in the entry for the Encyclopedia of Arkansas, with lynchings there are often different accounts of the events leading up the murder. The Indianapolis Recorder, a Black newspaper, said that there had been history between the fathers of Pounds and McGarry: years before, the father of Pounds had outwitted or defeated the father of McGarry in some altercation, and McGarry nursed a grudge and sought to get even. The Arkansas Gazette, a white-owned newspaper with a white audience, did not report any such detail. It simply claims that Pounds, a "Negro farmhand", broke into the house of J. W. McGarry and his wife while they were asleep, and assaulted McGarry's wife, whose screams caused Pounds to flee. Conflicting accounts, however, say that McGarry was not in town and that his wife stayed at the house with his sister, and that it was the sister who alerted the neighbors.Bloodhounds were used, and they led the authorities to the home of Pounds, who was arrested at 2 in the afternoon, on August 25. He, supposedly, confessed right away, and said he wanted to assault the first white woman he could. But the Indianapolis Recorder reported differently, saying that there was no evidence other than the bloodhounds pointing out Pounds, and that no other evidence was even sought. Pounds was taken into town by Sheriff John C. Riley, who left him in the car while he talked with his deputies about how to avoid Pounds falling victim to mob violence. That, apparently, created an opportunity for a few men to hijack the sheriff's car and drive out of town, with a mob in cars following them. Sheriff Riley, reportedly, was unable to follow them because he could not figure out where they went. The St. Louis Star-Times had a slightly different version of events, saying a group of fifty men "covered the officers with pistols", and the Associated Press reported similarly. Nancy Snell Griffiths added that it seems likely that the sheriff and his deputy left their prisoner intentionally for the mob to abduct.