WICOMICO COUNTY
TRUTH & RECONCILIATION
MATTHEW WILLIAMS
FEB. 8, 1908 - DEC. 4, 1931
Early Life
Matthew Williams was born on February 8, 1908, to Annie Handy, age 41, and Harry Williams, age 48. Matthew's mother, Annie, died of pneumonia when he was only 4 years old. His father, Harry, died when he was six years old. A year later, Matthew started school in Salisbury at the age of 7, but left at the age of 14, following the death of his grandfather. According to census records, Matthew spent most of his childhood living with extended family. He had one half-sister, Olivia Moody, who was about 16 years older than Matthew.
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By 1910, Matthew lived with his grandparents, Thomas and Mary Handy, along with several aunts, uncles, cousins, and sister. Nine people lived in their family home on Garden Street in Salisbury, MD at the time of the 1910 census. By 1920, Matthew's grandfather had passed away and most of his family had left the home. The only people that remained were his grandmother, Mary, and his maternal aunt, Minnie Handy. After Mary passed away, Matthew went to live with his aunt and uncle, Thomas and Addie (b. Handy) Black and their children at 503 Isabelle Ave in Salisbury, MD. His family and friends called him "Buddie."
Living in Salisbury, MD
At some point in his teenage years, Matthew Williams went to work for a local white employer, Daniel J. Elliot, who owned a lumberyard and box factory in town. Matthew worked as a laborer in the factory, and also did odd jobs for the Elliot family. According to several sources, Matthew was fond of the Elliot family, and them of him.
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Sherrilyn Ifill's book On the Courthouse Lawn, describes Matthew as:
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"a serious young man, especially about his money He'd reportedly saved $56 by the time of his death, a considerable sum for a black laborer in 1931. After his murder, no trace of the money was ever found. Williams did not drink or hang out with girls. He attended several churches, most often the John Wesley Methodist Church. His only frivolous indulgence seemed to be his hair, which he had touched up regularly at the Apex Hair salon on Isabelle street."
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His Aunt Addie gave a similar description of "Buddie" in an interview with The Afro-American. She told Levi H. Holley that she never knew her nephew to spend excessively. In fact, he was well-known in the community for his frugalness, and encouraged his friends to spend only on essentials.
Formerly known as the John Wesley Methodist Episcopal Church, the building is now the Charles H. Chipman Cultural Center - a small museum honoring the history of African Americans of the Eastern Shore. Matthew may have attended church here.
A 1940s postcard of Main Street in Salisbury, MD. Today Downtown Salisbury is recognized as a spirited center for commerce and culture in the region.
December 4, 1931
The afternoon of December 4, 1931, Matthew announced to his maternal aunt, Addie Black, that he was going to work. The details surrounding the rest of the day remain murky. There are 2 different versions of what happened on December 4, 1931. The following summarizations were provided by Salisbury University's Edward H. Nabb Center and edited for clarity.
Version 1
On the afternoon of December 4, Matthew Williams went to Daniel Elliot's office to discuss his low hourly wage. Elliot was in his office on Lake Street talking on the phone with another Salisbury businessman, Thomas Chatham, when Matthew entered around 2:00 p.m.
According to Chatham, who heard the incident over the phone, no words were spoken and two gunshots were fired. Chatham immediately called the authorities. The authorities arrived to find Elliot dead at his desk, his son, James Elliot present, and Matthew Williams incapacitated by several gunshot wounds.
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James Elliot stated that he had heard the shots from the house and ran to investigate, finding his father dead and Williams lying on the ground in a pool of blood. As James ran for help, Williams recovered enough to flee towards the lumberyard, only to be stopped by James Elliot with gunshot wounds to the shoulder and leg.
Version 2
A different account of the incident is found in Shepard Krech III’s Praise The Bridge That Carries You Over: The Life of Joseph L. Sutton. Sutton recalls a conversation in Easton, MD with a friend who said it was actually Daniel J. Elliot’s son, James, who did the shooting.
According to this version, Matthew had agreed to lend James Elliot, Daniel Elliot's son, a sum of money that he had saved on the condition that it would be repaid. When attempts by Matthew to collect the debt from James Elliot failed, Matthew went to his friend and employer, Daniel Elliot, for assistance.
James Elliot burst into the office and shot both his father and Matthew Williams. Matthew may have recovered enough to flee, as James Elliot asserted in his official story, but was incapacitated by bullet wounds by the time police arrived. James then gave the story that Matthew shot his father over a wage dispute.
The Lynching of Matthew Williams
The following summarization was provided by Salisbury University's Edward H. Nabb Center and edited for clarity.
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Once Matthew Williams arrived at Peninsula General Hospital in downtown Salisbury (now TidalHealth Peninsula Regional), half-dead and semi-conscious, he was immediately restrained in a straitjacket to prevent further attacks. As soon as Matthew's head and shoulder were wrapped, State´s Attorney Levin C. Bailey and Wicomico County Sheriff G. Murray Phillips questioned him, where he is quoted saying "I got my man."
The late edition of the Salisbury Times at first wrote that Matthew died at the hospital, but as soon as they learned he was still alive, by 7:30 p.m., a sign was posted on the Salisbury Times building correcting their previous statement. A crowd began to gather on the hospital lawn, and the phrase "Let's lynch him!" began to ring through the air. People were exiting from their homes, shops, restaurants and corner stores, adding to the commotion that evening. Delmar High School had just beaten Wicomico High School in a highly anticipated match-up of the two local football teams, and both teams were dining at the Wicomico Hotel on the corner of Main and Division St. near the scene as the crowd began to assemble.
A number of men entered the hospital, demanding that Matthew be turned over to them, but were stopped by Police Chief N.H. Holland and Deputy John Parks, who blocked the entrance. Six members of the mob then went around the building to an open side entrance and reached the "Negro ward" of the hospital. There, hospital superintendent Miss Helen V. Wise instructed them, "If you must take him, do it quietly." There were two other men in the ward at the time Matthew was taken, Rufus Jernigan and Jacob Conquest, but both were apparently unharmed during the raid. The men threw Matthew, still strapped in the straitjacket, out of a window down to the crowd of hundreds waiting below.
Wicomico High School Bowl and East Salisbury School, circa 1948. Image courtesy Nabb Research Center.
A postcard of Wicomico Hotel in Salisbury, MD, circa 1920. Description states "Eastern Shore's Finest and Most Modern Hotel."
As the crowd dragged Matthew towards the courthouse, onlookers joined in the event, and the hundreds at the hospital quickly grew to a crowd of thousands. Matthew, still straitjacketed, was pushed, stabbed with an ice pick, and then dragged behind a truck three blocks to the Wicomico County Courthouse Lawn. At 8:00 p.m., the crowd strung up a noose and found a branch twenty feet above the ground, tied it around Matthew's neck, and began to lift him up, then drop him down.
County Sheriff Phillips attempted to prevent the lynching, but the mob pushed him to the side. After repeating the lifting and dropping several times, the mob allowed Matthew to hang lifelessly for twenty minutes, meanwhile mocking the victim and taking parts of his body as souvenirs. After Williams thumped to the ground one last time; the crowd followed the body being dragged behind a truck once again, towards a black section of Salisbury off Poplar Hill Avenue. Finally, after about an hour of further torture, Matthew´s corpse was tied to a light post, doused in gasoline and oil, and set on fire in front of Rosen's store "so all the colored people could see him."
The sheriff was able to recover the body of Matthew Williams from the tired, drunken mob, and cut it down from the light post hours later. However, unsure as to what to do with the remains, he decided to dump the body in a field outside of town. Matthew's family, rightfully terrified and despite the atrocities that were forced upon their nephew, still wished to have the body recovered for a proper funeral. The Black undertaker, James Stewart, and authorities recovered the body from the field and brought it back for the funeral, held at Stewart's Funeral Home in Salisbury.
The James F. Stewart Funeral Business was located on Church Street in the Georgetown neighborhood, directly across from John Wesley M.E. Church.
A photo of the Wicomico County Courthouse. Matthew Williams was hung from a tree on the courthouse lawn.
Aftermath
After hearing of the lynching in Salisbury, Governor Albert Ritchie set up a task force with Attorney General William P. Lane to prosecute those involved, stating that the actions on the Eastern Shore were disgraceful to the entire state of Maryland. After interviewing the officers and hospital workers who were present December 4th, no one could recall or recognize anyone that was present that night. Incredibly, it was concluded that most of the active mob members were from other parts of the peninsula, including Delaware and Virginia. To this day, no one has been prosecuted for the lynching of Matthew Williams.
By 1931, Matthew's sister, Olivia, and her husband, Thomas Simmons, lived at 7118 Gray's Avenue in West Philadelphia and were not on the Eastern Shore when the lynching occurred. In an interview given to the Afro-American, she remembered her brother as a well-balanced man of good mind. He enjoyed movies, baseball, and church. Olivia was emphatic that Matthew did not shoot Daniel Elliot, telling journalists that "he admired Mr. Elliot, his son, and both of their wives." Matthew's aunt, Addie Black, gave a similar recollection of her nephew, Buddie, in the same issue of the Afro-American and added that working for the Elliot family was Matthew's very first job.
Image 1: Olivia (Moody) Simmons, Matthew's sister, is featured in the Dec. 12th edition of the Afro American. Image 2: A photo of the interview given to Levi H. Jolley by Addie Black, Matthew's aunt.
The media was complicit in maintaining silence after Matthew was killed. The Salisbury Times, the same newspaper that informed the angry mob Matthew was alive at the hospital, issued a statement the next day informing the public that they would not be reporting on the killing of Matthew Williams. In fact, they urged townspeople to return to normal and seek out others for information on the lynching as their paper would not detail them. The refusal of the Times and other members of the media to accurately report the lynching undermined the public's ability to collect information on the killing and bring the perpetrators to justice. Many of the articles and essays about Matthew's life and death are from "outside" sources, such as the Baltimore Sun or the Afro-American.
From the Dec. 12, 1931 issue of the Afro-American