The
Research
The
Reasons
Sources
by
Greg Fuller
The
Reasons
Just
as the American court system changed
by asking the question of "Why?" rather than "Who?" or "What?" I too began to
ask why? In this case, the "Who" was easy to discover but the "Why"
is more complex. Why did Ed Harville shoot his friend Lester Jones? My answer
was threefold. First, and most obvious, was that alcohol was a factor. Both
men were drinking all night. Although Ed Harville denied he was drinking in
his testimony, several witnesses stated that he had been. While the prohibition
movement was decreasing the number of alcohol related deaths, Clevelanders were
still able to find drinks in private saloons. The impaired judgment of Harville
and Jones was the result of the German introduction of lager beer some fifty
years earlier.
Secondly,
the fact that both men worked as laborers and had difficulty finding steady
work wreaked havoc on their spirit, and it is my opinion that they related this
to their manhood. Harville was so adamant about being done wrong, a feeling
that he 
probably
brought with him from Tennessee, and that continued in his frustrating efforts
in Cleveland to find work. A trend that started during the American Industrial
Revolution was that migrating African Americans had difficulty finding work
in northern industrial cities. Although the black literacy rate soared from
20% in 1850 to nearly 80% in 1890, blacks were still having a difficult time
finding work. "Few African Americans could afford to hire the professionals
who had sacrificed so hard for their degrees and fewer whites wanted to. And
as a result, after reaching a peak in 1910, the proportion of doctors and lawyers
in the black population plummeted and did not recover for three generations."
(Murder in America)
The
use of firearms was
the third factor. Handguns were appearing more frequently in northern cities
at the turn of the century. From New York to Philadelphia to Chicago, handguns
accounted for around 25% of all homicide incidents in the nineteenth century.
"The proportion of gun deaths rose dramatically in the early Twentieth Century
to forty percent [of all incidents]. The jump is the clear result of a population
shift, the upsurge of immigration, and especially of murder indictments among
African Americans and Italians; two groups more likely than others to carry
lethal weapons." (Murder in America) In relation to the frustrating efforts
to find work, African Americans living in high crime areas, still fearful of
whites, carried guns. I find it interesting that Ed Harville, an African American,
took Mike Castriagano's gun to commit homicide.
To better
explain these facts it is prudent to state the general feeling of blacks in
1912 and how they were stereotypically repressed. In the early 1900's, four-fifths
of the nation's ten million African Americans still lived in the South and worked
in agriculture. In the cities, most blacks had menial jobs and only a small
middle class was able to sell their services to the black community. After slavery,
racism evolved into many forms. Most notable was the influence of social Darwinism,
which in some interpretations held that blacks were a degenerate race, genetically
susceptible to vice, crime and disease, and were destined to lose the struggle
for existence with whites.
My opinion
is that this is a gross misinterpretation and that social Darwinism is unjustified
and neglectful towards blacks as well as whites. Such slurs that blacks were
part animal, who knew no love were evident in the South. In the North, "Coon
Songs" were popular in the theaters and in music. At a time of outright racism
in the South and subtle racism in the North, African Americans were in need
of leadership. This was found in Booker T. Washington and later in W.E.B. Dubois
who feared that black's material wants had developed quicker than their social
and moral standards. Dubois was quick to discount Washington's view that the
blacks were inferior, and rather felt that blacks should fight for their right
for civic equality. Dubois spread his word through Crisis, an NAACP newspaper
that he founded. Although the pinnacle of migrating Southern blacks to Cleveland
and Northern cities alike did not come until 1920-1930, these racial undertones
were becoming more evident in 1912.
The heightened
frustrations of Ed Harville and Lester Jones reflect the general attitude of
African Americans and of the pressure of white attitudes towards them. Understanding
what life was like in their neighborhood at the time of the murder is only a
part of understanding the big picture of our nation. The case of Lester Jones
mirrors the prevailing attitude in 1912 and many trends of the case are congruent
with the attitude of the nation.
Jones and
Harville were young and were part of a growing trend of black-on-black crime.
They both were drinking and this spurred homicide of anger. A gun was used,
which was part of another growing trend in homicide. The frustration of finding
menial work was evident as Jones cleaned the bar before it closed and started
to play cards with the money he just earned. The difference of how people lived
and worked in Cleveland in 1912 was slightly different from other places around
our nation, but the gap was closing. Cleveland's attitude towards African Americans
was becoming more racist and the resulting black frustration is evident in this
case.