Yes, I've heard the story many times. I looked it up just now in the Tennessee Encyclopedia of History and Culture. You can find it online at

http://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/imagega...

Mim Rivas also told the story in her book "Beautiful Jim Key," which I have at home.

At one time, there was a senior class project from one of the high schools, entitled "Watch Old Justice Burn," at the library which featured interviews of many people who remembered the event in person. The last time I saw it, it was in poor shape, and I don't know if they still have it there.

A black man, E.K. Harris, had been accused of "assault," which I believe in this case may have been a code word for rape. Prentice Cooper, who would later become governor and who was the father of U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, represented the man. An angry mob was on the courthouse lawn. Harris was sneaked out of the courthouse -- if I recall correctly, they dressed him in a police or National Guard uniform. When the crowd eventually realized they had been tricked, they burned down the courthouse.

One of the first stories I was really proud of when I started here in the mid 1980s was an interview with Raus native Ed Clark, who eventually became one of the great photographers for Life magazine. Clark was working for the Tennessean when the riot happened; the Tennessean wouldn't pay for a car to drive him to Shelbyville, and so Clark caught a ride with some National Guard troops.

The burning of the courthouse has, in the decades since, been a great inconvenience to various genealogists and historians, because of some of the records that burned with it.

Harris was eventually convicted (the trial was held in Nashville, and an NAACP-appointed attorney took over for Cooper) and executed, although there have been questions raised about the conviction. Some potential alibi witnesses who might have been to afraid to testify as a result of the violence.

The museum at The Fly has more pics and info.

Very interesting, thank you!

I thought you had all the answers about anything.

I've heard variations of the story of the courthouse burning since I was very young. Whatever the variation, it always centered around the heated racial attitudes of the time. I've also been told that the courthouse had also been destroyed by a tornado and rebuilt years before the fire took place.

TIME

Monday, Dec. 31, 1934

RACES: White Blood for Black

Lillian Gibson, a Tennessee hill girl of 15, lived at Fall Creek, went to school at Stump Valley, near Shelbyville. One afternoon last month she started home after school. A while later, her teacher said, Lillian came running frantically back. Her clothes were partly torn off, her body bitten and bruised. She was screaming "I'm gonna have a baby!"

That night John Gibson, Lillian's father, and a wrathful posse of 300 hillmen scoured the woods, caught a 22-year-old illiterate Negro named E. K. Harris. He was accused of Lillian's rape, taken to the Shelbyville jail. When a hillbilly mob went to Shelbyville, demanding that Harris be turned over to them, authorities spirited Harris away, first to Murfreesboro, then up to Nashville.

Last week Harris' trial was scheduled to begin at Shelbyville. Circuit Judge Coleman sensed trouble. The sheriff requested from Governor Hill McAlister enough militiamen to prevent disorder. Accordingly, when Harris was brought into Shelbyville he was riding in an olive drab militia truck and men from three companies of the 117th Tennessee National Guard were riding along with him.

Father Gibson had inflamed his mountain neighbors by telling them that Dr. E. E. Moody, a general practitioner of Shelbyville, had told him that Lillian was pregnant. The backcountry folk in turn rallied hundreds of Shelbyville's rabble, marched on the court house when the trial started. In the court room, Judge Coleman heard the mob shouting outside, tried to calm spectators with the assurance that it was just some sort of Christmas parade. No parade, the mobsters charged the court house twice. The no guardsmen returned tear gas for rocks, held firm. The third time the mob charged, militia officers, determined to hold the court house, ordered: "Fire!" A countryman named Pat Lawes spun around like a top, fell eight feet from the court house porch to a concrete walk below, dying. A house painter named Edwards dropped with a bullet through his chest. Two other countrymen were mortally wounded. Twenty in the mob were peppered in the legs with buckshot.

As the would-be lynchers turned tail under the blast, Judge Coleman hastily declared a mistrial, ruefully admitted that the attempt to prosecute the case at Shelbyville was "a mistake." Guardsmen wrapped puttees around Negro Harris' trembling legs, clapped a gas mask over his black face, covered his shabby sweater with a militia greatcoat, rushed him out to an automobile. Determined officers sped the blackamoor to Nashville and safety. Their job done, the troops marched out to the edge of Shelbyville and pitched camp.

Stakes were barely in the ground before the infuriated mobsters returned to the court house square. They upturned four National Guard trucks, set them afire. Then they stormed the 75-year-old court house, sloshed gasoline all over its floors, touched it off with matches. Firemen never had a chance. The mob stood guard over their work until the large brick building was a roaring furnace. The court house burned all night. All county records were destroyed. Shelbyville businessmen, aroused at the havoc their country cousins and excitable fellow townsmen had wrought, held a mass meeting, formed a vigilante corps. Dr. Moody told newshawks that he thought that Lillian was not pregnant, had not actually been raped. Indeed, she was back at school. Nevertheless Father Gibson swore a mighty oath, declaring: "The fire hain't started to burn yet. Our people back in the hills ain't agoin' to forget. They can keep the National Guards here for months, but that won't matter. I took Pat Lawes, who was my nephew by marriage, and Gill Freeman with me to the trial in my truck. Now both of 'em are dead. Governor McAlister is the man who did it all."

For copyright purposes, we'd prefer that people link to sources and/or quote very short excerpts rather than quote extended passages.

Here is the source: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/articl...

I've had a strong interest in this for years and did a lot of research on this, finding much more than what was reported in the 1969 Sesquicentennial edition. The '69 account was largely a rewrite of the original Bedford County Times story and, frankly, there's much that wasn't reported.

2009 is the 75th anniversary of this event and I'm planned on doing sort of an extension of my weekly Picturing the Past blog in December -- writing of several days' worth of events on the anniversary of each day.

Some quick thoughts:

Although the Time article puts out some names and facts not elsewhere published, I have some real doubts about its credibility. Note the words "hillmen", "mountain neighbors", "country cousins" and the general tone of the article. Also, Shelbyville attorney W.J. Crowell wrote Time in 1935 that much of the story was untrue.

I've found no indication John Gibson was ever punished.

As far as the Harris "conviction", jury deliberation (a jury including members of prominent Nashville families whose names you'd know today) supposedly lasted only a few minutes.

Harris supposedly confessed to the head of the state prison shortly before his execution; I wonder if it was a case of someone under extreme pressure caving in and telling someone what they wanted to hear.

Honestly, I've wondered for years if Bedford County killed an innocent man.

Wait until December and I'll post much more in my blog.

No thunder stolen, Nathan.

I'd like to know who posted the photos on Imageshack that Richard linked to and if they have any more.

David, In one of the articles it is mentioned that an Edwards man who was a house painter was shot in the chest. For a long time now I have been in my mind linking Edwards with "Big Six". I do not know where I got that from. In your research have you found mention of a "Big Six" Edwards?

Good post Nathan . . . I have always been curious as to what the real story was about that incident after hearing several versions over the years.

I was delivered by Dr. Moody in 1933. My Dad told about him, my Mother and me driving across the square while the shooting was going on. I also heard many stories about that day from my uncle S.K. Brantley who owned a drug store on the square.

Thanks zzoop for adding what has been passed down to you by your Grandfather and your Father. It kind of helps us to put a face on the people who were actually there during a terrible time in our county history.