TN 1919 Bertie Lindsay Homicide

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Maurice Mays had a lot of enemies. He was a young African American saloon owner in Knoxville's Bowery, the worst part of town in the early twentieth century. That area has been cleaned up and is now called the Old City. Maurice was also the African American son of Knoxville's mayor, who was white. Maurice had a bad reputation because dancing in a blended racial setting was against the law, as was gambling. Maurice loved the ladies and was known to have affairs with married women.

Maurice Mays was put to death in 1922 in Knoxville, Tennessee for the 1919 shooting death of Bertie Lindsay which occurred on the night of August 30, 1919 at 2:30 a.m. The town was split in half about his guilt.

I think there was enough reasonable doubt to aquit Maurice. Eight women testified that even after Maurice was in jail, the shootings done by black men to white women didn't stop. Most of the women survived. Some were raped.

The first two trials were mistrials. The third jury condemned him to die.

The governor will not pardon Maurice posthomonously.

I think this was a sad case of mistaken identity, combined with racial motivation to execute him.

 

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Interesting story, wondering if anyone else might have had a reason to murder Bertie Lindsey ?
Maurice Franklin Mays: Died claiming innocence but conviction stands
"When an intruder's gunshot killed Bertie Lindsey, a white woman, in the bedroom of her Eighth Avenue home in North Knoxville the morning of Aug. 30, 1919, White was one of the first officers to reach the scene. His next stop was Mays' apartment.

Mays greeted him, tired from a day of campaigning citywide for McMillan's re-election. White and two other officers later testified Mays' pistol smelled of fresh-burnt gunpowder, while Jim Smith, the only black officer present, swore he didn't smell a thing.

The ballistics tests that could have resolved that question didn't exist at the time. So officers bundled Mays into the horse-drawn patrol wagon and hauled him to the murder scene.

They stood him under a streetlight at the corner of Eighth and Gillespie avenues while White fetched the killing's only eyewitness ? Lindsey's cousin, Ora Smyth, who had been sharing a bed with Lindsey when the shooting happened less than an hour before.

The lineup lasted only a few seconds. Smyth, still shaking and crying, pointed to Mays as "the man" and was whisked away. Mays begged her to look again, to no avail.

"From that moment," he wrote in a letter from prison, "I have never had a chance for my life.""

 

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It was dark, so I'm not sure the cousin could have recognized him. Most men dressed alike back then.

 

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The victim's husband was working out of town when the murder occurred.

A local bootlegger testified that Maurice was cruising around town with him at the time of the murder. I think the jury didn't find his testimony credible because of the boot legging.

Most people who read about his case believe he was probably innocent. Maurice didn't get along with local police because they were always raiding his saloon. Gambling, liquor, and mixed race dancing were illegal back then. The police may have been looking for a reason to take him down.

 

[dotr]

Aug 11 2018
From gallows to gurney: Six of East Tennessee's most infamous executions
'Innocent as the sun that shines'
Mays, a black man rumored to be the illegitimate son of Knoxville's white mayor, paid no mind to the written and unwritten laws of his day. He dated white women, ran back-alley bootleg and gambling operations, and helped organize black voters for the city political machine.

The night Lindsey died, police headed straight to Mays' home, led by Andy White, an officer who'd cursed and threatened Mays for years. The only witness to the shooting, Lindsey's cousin Ora Smyth, who'd been sharing a bed with her that night, took just one look at Mays under the dim glow of a streetlamp and pronounced him "the man."

Bertie Lindsey, 27. Her murder by an intruder at 1216 Eight Avenue set off the 1919 race riot in Knoxville. Maurice Mays was executed for the crime in 1922. (Knoxville Sentinel) (Photo: Knoxville Sentinel)

A white mob blasted into the county jail with dynamite in a vain search for Mays the next day. He'd been spirited to Chattanooga by the sheriff. He stood trial less than a month later in front of an all-white jury that took 18 minutes to find him guilty.

A second trial ordered by the state Supreme Court ended with the same verdict and sentence - death. Despite pleas from prominent Tennesseans white and black, Gov. Alf Taylor refused to intervene.

Mays, his health ruined by the years of confinement, walked his last steps to the electric chair on crutches.

"I am as innocent as the sun that shines," he said from the death seat. "I hope the politicians are satisfied."
"He was still speaking when the current silenced him forever. Efforts to clear his name over the decades, including entreaties to Gov. Bill Haslam, have failed."