transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Within a few hours, 19 men found one leopard. They all blasted away, but a state trooper who was using a submachine gun, he got credit for the kill. At dawn the next morning, a local lumberjack stalked the other leopard with a little mongrel pup called Tony and a deer hound. Tony spotted the leopard and bravely charged it. He was instantly killed. Fair stunned the beast with three quick shots, then clubbed it to death with his rifle. By the week's end, one black bear and one monkey had surrendered meekly, but the other animals were still at large never to be seen again.

Speaker 2:
[00:37] This is a story about two graves in my hometown of Mena, Arkansas. One of these stories I've known about, the other I just learned about this year. The way death found both of these people was tragic, brutal, even bizarre. One induced by man and the other by animal. And you might ask, why bring these stories to light now? And the answer is, I think there's something to learn and they're telling. As I build these Bear Grease episodes, I really don't ever purposefully build themes. I just kind of take the stories as they come, but I feel like stories of tragedy have become more and more common. And I think a significant part of our lives will be gauged by how we respond to tragedy ourselves. And I know that if these stories reside in my hometown, I know that you have stories like these in yours. The untold stories of rural America are fascinating, but mainly because they're full of data for life today. And I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one. And hey, Bear John and I have our 12 and 26 film about our Southeast Alaska bear hunt that's up now on the MeatEater YouTube channel. Go check it out and let us know what you think. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is The Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight in unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans who lived their lives close to the land. Brought to you by Tecovas Boots. I'm a cowboy boot man, and I've been wearing Tecovas for years. They're the most comfortable boot I've ever put on. Good boots for good times. So I'm in Mena, Arkansas, in my hometown, and I'm at the Mount Calvary Cemetery. I'm walking in between headstones here, and I'm looking for one in particular that perhaps is the only one like it in all of America. I'm just kinda walking through, looking, seeing some graves that go back to the 1850s. There's a lot of just like typical gravestones that stand up, tall out of the ground, and then there's the headstones that are embedded in the ground. It's unseasonably warm for spring here. The air is hazy with smoke from controlled burns from the National Forest to the north and south of the city. I don't live in Mena anymore, but the town represents to me a starting place and a place of safety. This is where I grew up, but it hasn't been a safe place for everyone. Even though I grew up in this town, I had never heard about this grave until this year. I'm just going to have to go back to my OnX pen. Okay. Okay, I see it. There's a fresh set of flowers on it. Right there it is. Maria de Campa, killed by Circus Lion, 1942 to 1951. Nine-year-old girl, killed by Circus Lion. On the evening of October 30th, 1951, nine-year-old Maria de Campa was killed by a lion in Mina. The death was reported in the November 12th, 1951 issue of Life Magazine and again in the New York Times, along with countless other news outlets. It's reported that this is the only headstone in America with this inscription. The headstone is probably 10 inches by 18 inches. It's just a single granite brick laid even with the ground, and there's relatively new plastic flowers on the grave. What's so interesting about this is that this girl traveled with the circus. Her parents were tightrope walkers in the circus that came through Mena, Arkansas, and a lion got loose and killed her out in the parking lot. And she was left and she was buried in a very short period of time, and it's unclear if her parents even came to her funeral because the next day, the very next day, they headed to Mount Ida, Arkansas for their next show. And tragedy struck the group once again when they had a car wreck. It is a wildest story, and I cannot believe that I have never heard about this. Mena had just over 5,000 people in 1984 when Gary Believer Newcomb and Juju moved us here. And over 40 years later, today, there's around 5,400 people. My mom and dad were raised in Hot Springs, Arkansas, just 65 miles east in this town of 30,000 that's known for horse racing, bath houses, and being a haunt of Al Capone in the 1920s and 30s, and also the hometown of Bill Clinton. My dad was the son of a Baptist preacher, Lewin Newcomb, Paps, the bird hunter that I've talked so much about. And in 1969, dad would leave Hot Springs wearing green fatigues and head to Vietnam, where he'd see some of the worst of the world. And he vowed to protect his future family as much as he could. Mom and dad loved Hot Springs, but they knew that they didn't want to raise a family there. So they moved us to Mina. And as we'll see in these stories, this hasn't been a safe place for everyone. I'd like to introduce you to my former 6th grade geography teacher who had later become a history teacher and the principal of Mina High School, the beloved Mr. Todd Coogan. He grew up in Mina.

Speaker 1:
[07:30] Maria de Campa, 1951, killed by Circus Line. Even as a kid, I'm like, what?

Speaker 2:
[07:36] So you remember seeing it as a kid?

Speaker 1:
[07:38] Oh yeah, the grave, yeah. Hanging around the cemetery, I guess as there was nothing else to do, we just ride our bikes up and down Eve Street, and I see this grave stone, headstone.

Speaker 2:
[07:47] A person that I know, like a month ago, came to me and said, Clay, did you know that in your hometown, that this little girl was killed by a lion, Circus Line?

Speaker 1:
[07:58] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[07:58] I said, not true. I actually said, that never happened.

Speaker 1:
[08:03] Atta boy.

Speaker 2:
[08:04] I said, that is fake news. You know, like somebody has made some sensational story, and somehow it's targeted.

Speaker 1:
[08:13] Well, it is, it is true. And it's a horrific, horrific story. You know, my dad always, every time we have family get-togethers, he always brings us old pictures and old newspaper clippings. And we were at a birthday party, my sister and brother-in-law. We were at one of the local restaurants and dad walks in with a folder. And I'm like, this is five or six years ago. I'm like, oh, he's going to show us more pictures and, you know, whatever. And my sister reaches in and looks at it and goes, oh my God. And pulls one of them. I said, what is it? And he had the autopsy photos from Maria de Campa. Wow. Which is okay. But you don't bring them to a family birthday party and start showing them around. I didn't even look at them. I didn't want to see them just because of what the lion did to her.

Speaker 2:
[09:01] Harold Coogan, Todd's father, is a local legend. He's well-respected and considered the town historian. The death of Maria de Campa was well-documented. But I think we do well to learn something about circuses in rural America in the 1900s, and we've got just the person to teach us something about it.

Speaker 3:
[09:23] My name is Janet Davis and I am a historian. I have a PhD in history, US history from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. And I came to the circus in some respects by osmosis.

Speaker 2:
[09:40] Dr. Davis is the nation's expert on circus history and has written a book about it. She is passionate. The Campa Brothers Circus was out of Texas, and the circuses' impact in rural America was notable.

Speaker 3:
[09:54] You know, shows of all sizes were popular. And so, especially in rural marketplaces that did not have a wide variety of live entertainment coming to town all the time. So circuses really performed a really important function. And it's interesting because, you know, like what you have going on in Arkansas in 1951, in a way it mirrors, you know, you can go back like 120, 130 years to the early kind of frontier days of European settlement and expansion in America with the kind of hungry for entertainment, starved communities that are settling all across the country. In its heyday, you had people and animals from all over the world. You had top flight talent from all over the world. The circus was the place that was this kind of immersive sensoria of experiencing the world in an age before extensive travel was possible. So the circus brought the world to people's doorsteps.

Speaker 2:
[11:15] She said something that I want to key in on right here. The circus brought the world to people's doorsteps. And I think that's interesting that in this isolated community, when the outside world showed up, it delivered terror, confirming the suspicions of most. I think a lot of people moved to rural America feeling like they're somehow protected from the dangers of the big scary world. In a way, that's why my dad moved us there. But in many cases, this proves to be a false security. I've got somebody that's going to now give us the details of what happened to Maria.

Speaker 4:
[11:55] Hi, my name is Melanie Wade. I am from Mena, Arkansas. I used to be a reporter for the Polk County Pulse. As such, I came across many unique stories for our area. The story of Maria de Campa is one of the most unique, if not the most unique and definitely a tragic story that comes out of our history. So in late October of 1951, a circus rolled into town. Back then, traveling circuses came through towns, especially small towns, quite often. There was no entertainment to be had. So a circus was a big deal. They came in and performed feats that definitely no one from our area could perform. They were aerialists and obviously had these exotic animals. And it was just a unique thing for the circus to come to town. It was a moment of fun, it was a moment of strangeness, just because there would always be so many anomalies attached to a circus. But it's always a fun time. And so there's a lot of excitement surrounding when a circus comes to town. And so back then, it was a pretty exciting ordeal. So like I said, in late October of 51, the circus came into town. They set up, they had a performance. The first night, I believe, Mr. Harold Coogan, a local historian, he was about 14 years old back then. He attended the first night, but was not there on night two. And that's when the tragedy occurred. It's sort of unclear whether her parents, Maria's parents were actually performing at the moment that this happened, or maybe they were waiting to perform, but they were definitely performers in the circus. They were from Mexico, I believe, is where they originated from.

Speaker 1:
[13:45] Her parents were actually tightrope walkers in the circus. And it was called the Campa Brothers Circus. So it was her family that ran the circus. Ironically, the lion's name was Tame. They said it had just, Ministar reported that it had just done some kind of performance, and they didn't put it back in a cage. They put it out in the parking area on a small chain. I'm quoting the old Ministar, a small chain.

Speaker 2:
[14:15] The circus was held just outside of town, which is now a prominent place. It happened right where I went to school.

Speaker 4:
[14:23] It was actually held where our local school district is now, the high school, middle school, and an elementary school, and football field sit now, where this circus was held. That's sort of on the eastern edge of town. And so little Maria, I believe she was in the big top, and she comes out of the big top and is walking across the grounds. This lion was laying in wait under a wagon. And as she came by, the lion swooped her in. There were people on the scene that sort of tried to beat the lion off of her, but it was just too late, sort of from the beginning. I believe he grabbed her from the back of the neck.

Speaker 1:
[15:06] The lion jumps on Maria, grabbed her by the throat. The screams, the county sheriff was actually in the crowd at the circus, and he ran down there, they heard the screams. And when he got there, the circus workers were trying to reach under the truck with brooms and sticks and hit the lion, and you know how that turned out. They finally got the lion out. He would not let go of her. They pried the jaws open with the newspaper set with a large stick. Dr. Rogers, who was still a doctor here when I was a kid, he used to do our football physicals. Is that right? He always did the hernia check, you know, the one that you, the one station you always dreaded. I had no idea that he had, so he was there. They rushed her to the hospital, the old hospital up on Pine Street, and 30 minutes later, they pronounced her dead. I don't think they killed the lion. I believe if I remember correctly, they put the lion back in a cage. Unfortunately, hearing, looking at the, you know, my read of the article shows that she, it was not a quick, it was not quick. And so, you know, that just, that's disturbing that she had to suffer like that.

Speaker 4:
[16:29] As if that story is not tragic enough, the circus packed up and left town the next day, and because they were a traveling circus, her family, it's really unknown if her family was even able to attend services for her or properly grieve her. They left town, her little body was left at the local funeral home. I believe it was Guy or Quillen funeral home back then. And she was left there. I believe the owner of the funeral home is the one that actually purchased her tombstone that was later placed. But her little body was laid in to rest by the Catholic Church. We have a local Catholic Church here, a historical church on its own. But they sort of took control of the situation and they gave her services, performed services for her and then teared her into their local cemetery, which is Mount Calvary. I've been to Maria's place of rest multiple times and every time you walk up to view her there's a redstone. There is some sort of trinket or bauble or flowers that someone has left there. It's always really touched me. No one here knew her. She didn't have family here. Her family didn't stay here after she passed away here. But someone continues to pay homage to her and I think that's really touching and shows how much love exists in our community even for people that we don't truly know.

Speaker 1:
[18:09] The prosecuting attorney wanted to charge, they brought charges up for negligent homicide against the circus. The charges, they had the hearing within a day I believe. The charges were dropped because of, there was lack of evidence of a death but lack of evidence of negligence.

Speaker 2:
[18:27] In the obituary ran in the Mina Star newspaper, it cites three pallbearers but doesn't mention her parents. But they wouldn't have been pallbearers. So we don't know if they were there or not, and I hope they were. Maria was one of 13 children, and her obituary read in the Mina Star, Ms. Campa was born in Mexico City, Mexico on September 7th, 1942. Most of her life had been spent traveling with her parents who were in show business. The little girl received her schooling under the direction of a special tutor employed by the show to educate children of school age. Although the family was not acquainted in Mina, much interest was shown by local residents who sent flowers and attended the funeral service. I think it's interesting that it noted how the people of Mena responded. But the circus left the day after the attack, and it would later be reported that there was a cold rain that day, which ushers us into the second part of this story, which would almost be unbelievable if it hadn't been reported by many major national news sources.

Speaker 1:
[19:49] So to add on to that story, did you hear what happened the next day with that circus? They're heading to Mount Ida to do another show. Well, we're just going to bury our kid here in this town we've never heard of, and we're going to go on, which is bothersome. I always wondered, did her parents just go ahead and start doing their high wire act again the next day? I don't know. They're on their way to Mount Ida, and one of the trucks has a wreck around Pencil Bluff. The newspaper reports that two black bears, two leopards, a polar bear, one gorilla and several monkeys escaped into the woods in Montgomery County.

Speaker 2:
[20:35] No way.

Speaker 1:
[20:37] There's two days after this event. So this circus made national headlines twice.

Speaker 4:
[20:43] So now you're in between Polk County and Scott County, and there's exotic animals running loose. This little girl has been tragically killed the day before by this lion. And so Polk County's finest and their shotguns headed out on the prowl, and the hunt began to hunt down these exotic animals.

Speaker 1:
[21:07] They immediately started a manhunt for these animals. I'm going to read a quote from the Mina Star from 1951. Within a few hours, nineteen men found one leopard. They all blasted away, but a state trooper who was using a sub-machine gun, probably a Thompson 45, he got credit for the kill. At dawn the next morning, a local lumberjack, Ralston Fair, stalked the other leopard with a little mongrel pup called Tony and a deer hound. Tony first spotted the leopard and bravely charged it. He was instantly killed. Fair stunned the beast with three quick shots, then clubbed it to death with his rifle. Must have been a bad shot. That's what I'm thinking. By the week's end, one black bear and one monkey had surrendered meekly, but the other animals were still at large never to be seen again. Now, they made a point of this. Fair, who shot the leopard, gets to keep the pelt. Wow. That made news that he got to keep the pelt.

Speaker 2:
[22:16] According to this article, the gorilla and the two bears.

Speaker 1:
[22:22] Of course, the black bears would have done fine, because that's about the time the Game of Fish was starting to relocate black bears into the Washtetaws anyway.

Speaker 2:
[22:29] That's right. So, the gorilla, I don't know. Wow. You know, that story is so crazy, because I've heard rumors of stories like that, I think are all across the country. So, I've heard about, I mean, when you talk about black panthers, a lot of people, I've traced these stories back, and they go, oh, well, there was a circus train wrecked and all these whatever got loose.

Speaker 1:
[23:00] Well, here's the thing, if they were all males, I mean, there were some, and it was just two.

Speaker 2:
[23:07] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[23:08] And one of them was killed.

Speaker 2:
[23:10] It's just so stereotypical, almost, it's hard. I mean, we know it's true. I mean, there's no debating whether it's true or not, but it's almost hard to believe.

Speaker 1:
[23:19] Yeah. The gorilla and the polar bear, because they never mentioned them again. You think, is there some old farmer out in Montgomery County or maybe over in Norman or somewhere, or maybe up in the Nella community that's got a polar bear pelt that his great-grandpa... Yeah, yeah. I don't know.

Speaker 2:
[23:38] He's got a story. He said, man, once I was deer hunting and I killed a polar bear.

Speaker 1:
[23:43] I see, I'm on my tree stand and there's two monkeys walking, you know, they would arrest him for... They put him in the nervous hospital.

Speaker 2:
[23:51] Doing some further research, there was more. On November 15th, 1951, an article ran in a statewide newspaper about one of the black bears being killed two weeks after the accident and five miles away from the crash. The author cited that it was an illegal kill because there was no bear season in Arkansas. And this was before the restocking of bears into the state, so there were virtually no wild bears in all of western Arkansas. But, was it even the circus bear or a wild straggler that somebody killed? Somebody just showed up with a dead bear. We'll never know, but to my knowledge, no charges were ever filed against the guy that killed it. And here's the wildest part. The polar bear was actually killed three weeks after the wreck by a cattleman named Math, that's right, M-A-T-H, Math Singleton, near the community of Oden. Newspapers would later report that several men in the community ate the meat and a man named Billy John Ballentine was quoted saying, it was the sorriest meat I ever put in my mouth. It's not reported what happened to the hide. I assume somebody over in Oden's got it today. I don't know, but that is wild. So it feels like this circus is just like a complete disaster, isn't it? Chaos.

Speaker 1:
[25:17] I think I'm more bothered by the fact that they just went on, you know, they just buried their kid here and went on.

Speaker 2:
[25:22] Well, I had heard that, I mean, that's one of the most peculiar things about the whole deal. And I mean, I know you would hope there would be some context that would make it make more sense. But like during that time, like the nature of the schedule and like these people had no connection to Mina.

Speaker 1:
[25:43] No, not at all.

Speaker 2:
[25:44] And that's an interesting part of this because I never heard about this. And it was so surprising as an adult to hear about it.

Speaker 1:
[25:52] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[25:52] And then, but then in some ways it makes sense because this girl wouldn't have had any family here. She would have been a complete stranger. And from Mexico.

Speaker 4:
[26:02] Just the circus coming to town back then was a big deal. You know, just that in itself was a big deal. Can you imagine, you know, the kids running around in the, you know, 1951 going, the circus is coming to town, you know, and then, then that, you know, the next night, oh my gosh, this little girl's been killed. And then the day after that, oh my gosh, there are exotic animals in our woods. I mean, I can imagine half the county gathered up, you know, and said, well, we've got to stop these exotic animals, you know, before they take the life of anyone else. You know, I think that was probably just, it just really compounded the whole issue is that, you know, if some circus came through there and they had a wreck and their animals got out, they went, oh, we hunted a leopard this weekend, you know, but the fact that this little girl had died, you know, at the jaws of this lion, and then the next day, all of these exotic, you know, big cats, leopards, you know, bears, polar bear, you know, escaped. I imagine that would have been really, really scary. So I imagine there were a lot of dads and grandpas and young men that said, you know, we've got to stand for our own. So it was a big story. It wound up being a nationwide story for sure, between her death and, you know, the death of Maria and the accident, the animals escaping and the big hunt for them afterwards. It was a nationwide story. And in 1951, for something to be a nationwide story, it was a big deal. You know, we didn't have social media. Most people didn't have telephones or televisions or, you know, and so big places like Life Magazine and the New York Times picked it up and it happened to be a nationwide story, but it all happened right here.

Speaker 2:
[27:51] Well, to me, part of the intrigue of a story like this is just how, what stories lie inside of everybody's hometown. Because the further that I've got away from MENA, Arkansas, the more I learn about it, the more I realize what a unique place this is, but also how this is just a sample. I mean, I don't know that MENA is that unique. I think there's stories like this everywhere. This story is just so bizarre. And what's most shocking to me is that I never knew this story. I drove past this cemetery my whole life and somehow didn't know about Maria de Campa and the circus. How could this happen? Her death happened in MENA seemingly by chance, almost like it could have happened anywhere that the circus stopped, but it happened here. But her grave is not the only unusual grave in this cemetery. And I want to tell you another story that's connected only to Maria through geography and the graves almost being within sight. If it wasn't for a small hill, you could see the other grave we're about to hear about. But this one I've known and I've been to it before many times. I start walking due west of Maria de Campa's grave. And this story is not one that anybody is proud of, but paints an interesting picture of the times. We're going to go back another 50 years to 1901. So I'm walking from the Mount Calvary Cemetery to the White Oaks Cemetery. They're connected, but they have different entrances. And Mount Calvary is the Catholic Cemetery. And White Oak is the Protestant Cemetery. And now this headstone, I would have known about my whole life. I'm walking a long ways from the main cemetery, because it's kind of off down the hill in the woods. And there are one, two, three, four, five, six big white headstones that are set off, way off, probably 75 yards off from the main cemetery. I believe these are Yankee soldiers, soldiers who fought for the North, and they are not in the main cemetery, along with Pete. There's the headstone, there's been a new headstone, Peter Berryman. Peter Berryman was buried in 1901, away from the main cemetery for a very simple reason. He was a black man. It's also very interesting that the Union soldiers are also buried out of the main cemetery way back in the woods. But Pete's grave is all the way back, along with several other unmarked headstones, which I assume are also black people. We're going to talk to Mr. Coogan about the life and death of Peter Berryman. And if you're listening with children, be warned that this is pretty rough, but we're gonna tell it because this is just the way it happened.

Speaker 1:
[31:29] I had first heard about him when I was a little kid. I was born and raised here, and I lived just right down the road from White Oak Cemetery. And I ride my bikes there all the time as a kid, and we'd go back down in the woods, and I saw this little headstone. This is gonna sound horrible, but I don't mean it disrespectful. Little headstone. You've seen it? It's a brick. It's a granite brick, and it says Pete. And as a kid, I thought, oh, somebody's buried their dog down here. I mean, I was like nine, and I saw that, and I thought, well, that's pretty nice to put a headstone, or, you know, found out later it was a person. And I remember asking my dad about him. He kind of told me a little, he didn't want to tell me too much being that age, but then he did an article about him, and I think it was put in the Arkansas Times newspaper or magazine back then. Yeah, the story of Pete is interesting because if you look at, so MENA was incorporated as a city in 1896. Of course, there were people here, the county had been established in the mid 1840s. So 1896, MENA had its first census in 1900, 14 years later, and it showed 152 black people just in the city limits of MENA. Countywide, there were a couple of hundred at that time. So I want to start out by saying in 1900, there were officially 152 black people living in the city limits of MENA, which was much smaller than it is now. Ten years later, the 1910 census, there were 16. So obviously, something happened to motivate them or prompt them to maybe we should leave this area. And I think it had a lot to do with Pete. You know, I tell people, in fact, I started my term paper this way that most small towns have always had those certain citizens that others find peculiar just because of the way... They're not necessarily bad people, they just... just their behavior. You know, we've always had those folks that others kind of look at like, well, that's just not normal. You know, they walk the streets, they sing out loud. We have a lady here at the courthouse that several times a month, early in the morning, she's out here singing the national anthem at the top of her lungs. Nothing wrong with that. But it's just 99.9% of the other people are doing it. And, you know, there's just some of those people who are considered eccentric. So Peter Berryman, this was, so he died in 1901, was killed in 1901. They estimated his age at 45. And he was that citizen at the beginning of the city. According to the old, now most of the information that I'm about to say came from the old Mina Star newspapers from back then. They often called him half-witted, crazy, his nicknames, Crazy Pete, and then the other one with the N-word, which I won't say it was the N-word Pete. And he had been in some trouble before. He was, he couldn't read or write. He was illiterate. I suppose he was a good man because people kind of tolerated him. He had gotten into some trouble before. One time he got, he was found cooking in an alleyway behind a saloon, and which the policeman showed up and told him to move on, and that would have been the end of it. But he tried to get in a fight with the police officer. Police officer arrested him. The judge gave him a fine the next morning. And then I read something about where he had almost, the newspaper said a near-fatal attack on an engineer with an ax. So I'm assuming it was a Kansas City Southern engineer. And he was probably, I'm assuming, he was probably roaming around the railroad tracks or the depot or something, and an engineer told him to... It sounds to me like he's just one of those that kind of flew off the handle and didn't like to be told what to do. One of those things.

Speaker 2:
[35:58] Telling a 125-year-old story using only accounts from newspapers is about as good as we can hope for, but we also know that it's going to take some reading in between the lines. Blacks during this time were massively disenfranchised. Society was segregated, and by all accounts, Pete was also mentally unhealthy. All of these things would come into play into what would happen. And if you're familiar with the book, To Kill a Mockingbird, you might see what's coming.

Speaker 1:
[36:35] So the incident occurred. I think this happened. You remember the old Sunshine House, the yellow house on the corner of Jansen and 8th?

Speaker 2:
[36:45] I went to preschool there.

Speaker 1:
[36:47] But I think what I'm about to tell you happened on that street, where it is now. There was a family there named the Osborns, and had a fence. This is 1901. Pete had a habit. Apparently, there was an opening in their fence, and Pete would walk the town, and he had a habit of going through that opening in their fence, and going and getting water. I'm assuming out of their well. They were used to seeing him, and the Osborns tolerated it. From my understanding is, it got to a point where he would kind of harass their children. So, they had a nine-year-old daughter named Elsie, and she was, had some lumber, and why they sent her, I don't know. They sent her out to patch the hole in the fence to keep him out. So apparently, he walked by while she was patching the fence, an argument, here's a 45-year-old man, black or white, doesn't matter, arguing with a nine-year-old girl. So that kind of shows his mental state maybe. And the argument led to him going through the fence. She raised her hammer as she was going, and rightfully so, probably. And he allegedly, probably did, allegedly kicked the nine-year-old girl in the abdomen. The newspaper described it as very serious injuries. So the Osborne family reported it. He was arrested the next day. I think it was February 21st of 1901. He was arrested and he was put in jail, and he was going to be in front of the judge the next morning. So what happened that evening? From all accounts, it was after midnight. There was a police officer, kind of like the Andy Griffith show. Apparently, he would walk the town and check doors and check, walk out, walk through alleys. I think his last name was Jones. And a group of masked men, it doesn't say how many, but a group of masked men approached the officer while he was downtown. It was after midnight, I believe. And they didn't assault him, but they took that gunpoint, they took his revolver. I want to say they tied him up, but I don't know. I know that two of the masked men stayed with him. They took his revolver and his keys. The rest of them, don't know how many, went to the jail, took Pete out and they disappeared. And the police officer reported at about 2 a.m. they all came back without Pete, gave the officer back his revolver, gave him back his keys and they took off. The jailer goes back to the jail, sees that Pete's not there and they start a search overnight. They can't find him. At daylight the next morning, citizens start rousing around and I don't know exactly. There's different rumors about where the tree was. That really doesn't matter. But they found his body at the base of the tree. He was not still hanging from the rope. In fact, there was no rope there, from my understanding, but he had obviously been hung and he had been shot and he had been beaten.

Speaker 2:
[40:16] This was a straight-up lynching, common of the time period in the American South. It's hard to listen to. It's hard for me to reconcile that this happened in my hometown. Pete might have been mentally unstable. Maybe he was crazy. But somebody loved him. He was somebody's son. He was probably born around 1855, so he was likely born to a mother and father who were enslaved. But that mother nursed her infant child with a hope that he'd live a better life than her, and he was lost that night in a tragic story that put another thread in the quilt of terror for blacks in America. Here's Mr. Coogan.

Speaker 1:
[41:02] I do have seen, have seen, in fact, my grandfather owned the journal of a man who moved here. He had arrived on the Kansas City Southern that morning, and he had entered in his journal that said something like, Big ruckus in this new town today. Apparently, a black man had been lynched much to the chagrin of the people. So, that's an interesting thing I want to point out. It's, it's, the general stereotypical view is that the people of MENA would have celebrated this. They didn't. The people of MENA were outraged. They were highly upset. A lot of them got together and collected money. $380 reward, which I, I don't know what the equivalent of that would be today.

Speaker 2:
[41:48] Seems like a lot.

Speaker 1:
[41:49] Yeah. And some other people from other states, once the word got out, because this made national news and they wired the governor, demanded an investigation. Many of the white people in MENA were outraged by the crime. The men were never identified. But, you know, in my, you said something about my personal opinion. I'm thinking how many wives sat there with their husbands after that and looked at their husbands like, you know, he's been, he's made comments about the blacks around here. You know, I didn't see him last night. Could he, you know, just the daughters and mothers wondering was my husband involved in that? But they never did find who they were.

Speaker 2:
[42:33] That seems stereotypical too though. Yes, that, you know, how hard would it be in this small community? People knew who did it. Wouldn't you think?

Speaker 1:
[42:43] Oh, yeah, they had to have, but they sure must have stayed tight-lipped because this this story, I believe, made the New York Post or maybe the Times. And so the governor kind of got pressured to send some, I don't know if he sent state police or federal marsh. I don't know who came, but they did look into it, tried to get with. Nobody would talk. Well, I mean, nobody, they may not have known. They just, it was so late at night. You know, people back then, there was no electricity. You know, back then, people worked from daylight till sundown because they had no light. And, you know, other than burning their bear oil or their kerosene or whatever they had.

Speaker 2:
[43:23] It's hard for me to believe that they couldn't figure out who did this. But at the same time, I don't want to jump on the bandwagon that all authority in the south at the time was corrupt. I just don't think that's true. I think there were good men and I think there were very corrupt men back then, just like there is today. Stereotypes are never fully true.

Speaker 1:
[43:46] So, yeah, I never heard anything else about it. It's very limited after that. I just know it made national outrage, but it was kind of impressive. You know, I remember back in the early 90s, I know that because I was a young teacher when it was announced that the KKK was touring Western Arkansas, you may remember, I don't know.

Speaker 2:
[44:03] I don't remember.

Speaker 1:
[44:03] And they were going to have a rally here at the Polk County Courthouse. And we were very proud because the people of MENA ran them off, you know, and we're 90, right now 97% white. And the people of MENA were not supportive. And I believe they stopped again in Mansfield after they left here and they were not supportive. And so that was that was good to know.

Speaker 2:
[44:29] You know, I didn't know where this story was going to go. Yeah. And I'm very glad to hear that.

Speaker 1:
[44:35] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[44:35] I didn't I didn't know that. I want to go back to I want to go back to the actual crime.

Speaker 1:
[44:43] Yes. So the newspaper called it alleged that he kicked her in the and I didn't know if you're talking about the crime of the little girl. That's right. He probably did. But it said alleged, of course, they were still using the legal terminology and it's until proving guilty. Now, he might have gone in front of the judge the next day and admitted, yes, I did that. They would have put him in jail for a few months. Yeah. But he would have survived.

Speaker 2:
[45:07] That's the part that I guess we'll just never know.

Speaker 1:
[45:10] Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[45:10] Because again, the stereotypical story would be that this black guy would have maybe done something that if anybody else would have done, wouldn't have been that big of a deal.

Speaker 1:
[45:24] That's true.

Speaker 2:
[45:25] Pete didn't deserve to die for what he did. I was glad to hear that many of the people of MENA were outraged, but they still never even pressed charges on anyone for the crime. I find it very hard to believe that people didn't know who did this, and they couldn't have figured it out if they just tried a little harder. Man, that's super interesting. You know, growing up, I would have known him, heard my whole life, him be called N-word Pete.

Speaker 1:
[45:59] Yeah, that's the first way I heard him. Well, the first time my dad told him when I was old enough, when he felt like I was old enough to hear the story, his first term was Crazy Pete, because that was what he was also called me. And he said, unfortunately, I remember him specifically saying unfortunately, they also called him the N-word Pete.

Speaker 2:
[46:18] That's admirable that your dad back in the 80s or whenever it was would have.

Speaker 1:
[46:24] Yeah, that's, I'm really glad to hear that. He's 88 now, but I think he still misses doing this, but he's a master historian. And he did a lot of, he got all the old mean of stars. In fact, after the 2009 tornado, his first concern was because the mean of star building had gotten hit. They gave him permission. He collected up all the old mean of stars, every one of them, and kept them in his house, out in his shop, in trash bags. Now, I don't know if you knew this, you know, he retired from the community college as a history professor. They have dedicated a room to him. It's called the Harold Coogan Special Projects Room. Well-deserved, not because he's my father, just because of what he has done for this community, as far as making people hear some of these stories. The college hired a professional document restorer that came in and took every one of them. I mean, we're talking about every minute. It's a weekly paper. At the time, it was daily. It used to be a daily paper for 30 or 40 years. Wow. They took all these papers and put them in some kind of huge deep freezer to kill all the bugs and all the mold and everything else. And then they've added the special room to the library and they had the dedication. And now every single one of the Mina stars are available for public view. I encourage your listeners, anybody, find out the stories from your town. You know, whether it's the old newspapers. I mean, I saw an article from a 1910 Mina star, what used to make the news back then. Mr. and Ms. So-and-so made the first automobile trip from Mina to Hot Springs. It took them eight hours. They telegraphed and talked about they had made it, they're safe and they'll be back in two days. That was big news back then. Wow. Of course, in 1910, it was a Model A maybe that they were driving on a dirt road, 85 miles. That was big news. Wow. But it was in the Mina. Those stories like that are all across the country in these small towns. Yeah. It's just amazing what you'll find. I have found police records of my grandpa Cougan getting in a bar, getting arrested. I never knew that. He was 22. He was an old logger, toughest nails, and got arrested for getting in a fight with his own brother at a bar. You might find out some things about your own relatives that you won't be proud of. Yeah. Of course, they're deceased now, but still just like that. It's really an interesting thing. It's time consuming, but it's really interesting if you can find the old newspapers from your hometown.

Speaker 2:
[49:15] The reason we still know the story of Pete and Maria de Campa is mainly because of Harold Coogan and his influence in MENA. I think knowing your local history can be powerful, and it makes me think about what's going on today, and that our grandkids and great grandkids will one day be talking about where you and I stood in the history that's going on today. And they will have a lot of time to make judgments about the righteousness or unrighteousness of where we stood. That makes me want to walk circumspectly, be humble, and to think about other people, because there's some wild stuff going on today too. I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease and Brent's This Country Life Podcast and Lake's Backwoods University. Please leave us a review and give our podcast a five star rating, and share this episode with a friend. Keep the wild places wild, because that's where the bears live.