By Logan Langlois
NASHVILLE, TN — On February 25, 1946, a Black woman named Gladys Stephenson returned to the Castner-Knott department store in downtown Columbia to pick up the radio she had taken to be repaired. She had been told to come back several times by the shop, always with a higher price attached to the repair, and once so the shop would buy the radio back from a different customer they had sold it to. This time, she brought her son James Stephenson, an American naval veteran, upon which the two received the radio at around double the original price, and still broken. After this, Gladys and the white department store employee William Fleming had a heated argument, during which sources differ as to whether Gladys was assaulted, or physically threatened, by Fleming.
“This veteran used to box, this veteran was not going to let someone smack his mother,” said Emory University Associate Professor of African American studies Carol Anderson during a video posted by the university about the event.
“He steps in-between, and the fact that you have a Black man in Tennessee, in 1946, basically stepping up saying, ‘oh no, you are not going to lay your hands on my mother.’”
James told his mother they were leaving with him behind her when Fleming, still in a rage, struck the naval veteran in the back of the head. James returned blows as a fight ensued, during which the pair both crashed through a plate-glass window and onto the street. It was then a white crowd began to gather around the fight, where several joined in beating James. In an effort to defend her son, Gladys picked up one of the glass shards left by the broken window off of the ground and began slashing openly at the racist mob, after which she was also beaten by the crowd, arrested by police, and charged with assault.
While Gladys and James were held in jail following the arrest, Columbia’s Black community heard about conversations occurring within the white circles milling around the jail, regarding how they may take matters into their own hands in ways similar to a lynch mob. The Black community then covertly worked to get Gladys and James out of Tennessee and began to arm themselves to defend their homes and families as the crowd approached. Violence erupted when the white mob arrived, several of which attempted to pour out gasoline to set fire to buildings around the Black community, until being fired upon by Black Americans placed on top of roofs and wounding several.
It was during this time the white mob continued to increase in numbers, eventually even ignoring the local sheriff’s department encouraging them to settle down. This prompted the Tennessee State Guard to be called in, while the Black community members continued protecting their lives and property. The day following the altercation, the State Guard moved into the scene, where several beatings and shootings occurred. By the end of the day, many of the homes and buildings the Black community had been fighting to protect were ransacked by State Troopers, and 25 Black men were arrested for attempted murder for shooting at the mob.
During the ensuing trial, the Nashville NAACP sent legal representation, including Z. Alexander Looby of Nashville and Maxwell Weaver of Chattanooga to defend the accused. In the first round of the trial, 23 of the accused were found not guilty, with the charges of the remaining two accused later dropped.
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