They don’t lynch in Tangipahoa Parish anymore

Stumping on the parish courthouse lawn in Shreveport on September 31, 1932, gubernatorial candidate Dudley J. LeBlanc said, “They no longer lynch people in Tangipahoa Parish. They don’t have to. Their newspapers do it for them.”

The candidate held up a newspaper called The Louisiana Progress and waved it at the crowd. “It started in Crowley, but now it’s a Hammond publication,” he said, “And nothing more than a propaganda machine for Senator Huey P. Long.”

“Just a few weeks ago,” he said, “This rag ran my photograph on the front page; me with a negro standing beside me, and the accompanying article accused me of connecting in the insurance business with a black man.”

LeBlanc pointed to seven businesses across the street, naming each one. “Those stores sell merchandise to negroes. Do these Long supporters say anything about that?” Next, he pointed to a group of bruised and bloody protesters in the crowd. “Do these Long henchmen say anything when sheriffs across Louisiana collect taxes from negroes? Insurance was my business. I sold policies to white people and colored people, and no one can fault me for that.”

“Look at those negroes working state jobs while white men beg for work,” LeBlanc added. “And the white men that do work get only 15 to 20 cents per hour, and Long wants them to give part of that to build roads and fund old-age pensions. Ridiculous!”

“Ask yourself why Long did not run a picture of the negro he and Puppet Governor O. K. Allen imported from Arkansas to work at his newspaper. This same negro attacked a white woman two months ago in Denham Springs,” he shouted, almost falling from the podium, as the crowd laughed.

“Go ahead,” he said in a lower tone. “How would you hecklers like your wife or sister or daughter attacked by Huey P. Long’s imported negro? Laugh that off. Why don’t you?”

The Associated Press picked up the Shreveport Journal stories recounting LeBlanc’s speech, prompting Livingston and Tangipahoa Parish residents to insist that local law enforcement force “Long’s imported negro” to pay for his crime.

However, the information circulated did not add up. John Cage, a black man from Arkansas, did work for the Louisiana Progress. However, Sheriff Rudolph P. Easterly could find no recent reports of a black man assaulting a white woman, not in Denham Springs or anywhere in Livingston Parish.

Neither could Sheriff Frank Edwards in Tangipahoa Parish.

In time, though, East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff Robert Lee Pettit remembered a reported assault that somewhat fit the timeline suggested by LeBlanc, and it did involve a black man named Johnny Cage.

Tuesday, July 21, 1931, Baton Rouge police arrested a Springfield man, Harvey A. Jones, and a former Amite resident, Ned Harrell, charging them with shooting a black man, Elbert Warner, in the back. According to statements from both men, they abducted Warner from his home that morning, demanding that he take them to a man named Johnny Cage.

According to Jones, Thursday morning, July 16, he arrived for work at Standard Oil in North Baton Rouge to find Ned Harrell, a friend, and co-worker,  looking for him. Ned Harrel had recently moved from Tangipahoa Parish to the Brookstown neighborhood north of Baton Rouge. Harrel told Jones his wife dropped him at work and returned home that morning to find a black man running from their house as their 16-year-old niece slept in her bed.

Since that morning, the men told the sheriff’s deputies who arrested them that they had been searching for Johnny Cage, the only black man working in the neighborhood. They believed Cage had crossed the river and left town until another co-worker claimed to see shoe-shiner Elbert Warner polishing Cage’s shoes near the train station. Warner denied knowing Cage and ran, forcing the men to shoot him in the back.

John Cage maintained the press in Hammond, as he did before George Campbell bought it in Arkansas. He printed the 8-page weekly, all day and into the night on Wednesdays. Once printed, Cage carted the papers to the Hammond Depot in bundles. Then, from midnight on, he unloaded bundles of the Thursday newspaper at every stop along the line. Brookstown readers knew him by name because he unloaded the largest bundles in Baton Rouge at sunrise.

Although condensed, the remainder of the story is from a Denham Springs News article, Thursday, September 29, 1932:

“Saturday, Sheriff Easterly of Livingston learned of the negro fugitive in this section. Sheriff Pettit and Deputies Fred Parker and Tom McVea came to Livingston after hearing from Sheriff Easterly that someone saw the negro visiting a house in Albany.”

“Another report placed Johnny Cage in Hammond, where he worked before becoming a wanted man. Sheriff Pettit and his two East Baton Rouge deputies joined Deputy Sheriff Frank Cowen of Ponchatoula and searched for him in Hammond but again could not find him.”

“Saturday evening, about 4 o’clock, the Tangipahoa and Livingston sheriff’s deputies left for their homes. The East Baton Rouge officers started home also. About three miles out from Hammond, near Baptist, Sheriff Pettit and his deputies saw the fugitive negro in a friend’s yard, cutting the friend’s hair.”

“The minute Cage saw Sheriff Pettit, he dropped his scissors and ran around the house, headed for the woods, 70-yards away. Sheriff Pettit called to the negro to halt and kept calling until the negro was a few steps away from the woods where his escape would have been certain. Then, when the command to halt did not stop Cage, the sheriff fired his shotgun.”

“The negro fell, got up and ran, and was found some distance in the woods two hours later. He had fallen dead from the effects of three buckshot through his lungs.”

“Coroner Ricks of Tangipahoa presided over a coroner’s inquest, where the jury reached a verdict of Justifiable Homicide.”

“Later, Sheriff Edwards’ deputies took the negro’s body to Hammond until the East Baton Rouge officers could notify John Cage’s relatives in Hope, Arkansas.”