CHAPTER 6 THE AFTERMATH, THE BEATINGS, AND THE MAN IN THE GARAGE

Nashville Public Library, Special Collections, *Nashville Banner* Photos

Guide to the Racists in this Chapter

J.B. Blackwell Bombing suspect and seemingly fake person

Robert Bromley Wallace Rider’s tenant and fellow fraudster

Emmett Carr Nashville’s highest-ranking Klan leader

Asa Carter Renegade Alabama Klan leader

Carroll Crimmons Bombing suspect

Vincent Crimmons Bombing suspect

James R. Harris Bombing suspect

W.D. Hodge Bombing suspect

Frank Houchin Local criminal who was somehow tied into the truck depot bombings back in 1952

John Kasper Lead troublemaker in Nashville at this time

Jack Kershaw Donald Davidson’s compatriot

Thomas Norvell FBI informant

Charles Reed Thomas Norvell’s friend

Wallace Rider Nashville Klansman and insurance fraudster

James McKinley “Slim” Thompson An Alabama associate of Rider’s

J.B. Stoner All-around racist and terrorism facilitator

William Arnold Wilkins Inconsequential suspect

Carrie Wray Kasper supporter

On the morning of September 10, 1957, rioters were back out at the schools early. This time, the police were not messing around. They arrested protesters left and right and, among them, folks driving blue-and-white Hudsons. Such a car had been seen driving away from Hattie Cotton at the time of the bombing.

William Arnold Wilkins, a twenty-year-old from the Bordeaux area, was the first to be picked up. He, like other segregationists, was back out on the second day of school to be part of whatever might happen, and he was driving such a car. Police told the Tennessean that “wire found at Wilkins’ home was ‘generally of the same type’” used by the bombers.82

The Crew from Whites Creek

Next, the police arrested James R. Harris, J.B. Blackwell, and Vincent Albert Crimmons, who were also in a blue-and-white Hudson, decorated with KKK signs and other segregationist slogans.⁸³ They were picked up near Fehr School first thing in the morning. The police found a Billy club, a bolo knife, and mallets in their car.

Sources told the Tennessean that Harris, Blackwell, and Crimmons made statements that seemed to indicate they knew something about the bombing. Whatever those statements were, they caused the police to go arrest Vincent’s brother, Carroll Crimmons, and W.D. Hodge, who, like the other three, lived out along or near Whites Creek Pike just outside the city limits.

The police said they found fragments of wire in the car with Harris, Blackwell, and Vincent Crimmons, and that Blackwell and V. Crimmons had experience using dynamite to clear cess pools. The picture of the police with these wire fragments shows a substantial length of wire, which seemed to fit with their theory that the bombers would have run a long length of fuse.

The story the Tennessean was getting from police diverges wildly from the story the FBI was getting from police. Early on the morning of September 13, Special Agent in Charge Lopez called FBI headquarters and told them the Tennessean had a story saying there was a witness to the bombing, a woman who had been in the car when the dynamite was acquired and had told the police who did the bombing. Lopez told Headquarters that he thought this was Betty Jean Moore, who had told police “that one William Wilkins had stated to her some time ago that he had three sticks of dynamite in his 1949 Hudson. According to information available to Lopez, there is no indication that Wilkins is implicated in this bombing.”⁸⁴ Lopez thought the police had released the tale of the squealing witness to “keep the story alive.”

Wilkins was trying to impress a girl and got briefly caught up in the biggest local news story of the day.

What happened to the Whites Creek Pike guys is much more troubling.

These men, as far as I can tell, had indeed been hanging around Kasper rallies and at least some of them had Klan ties. But, in most ways, they were very much outside the mainstream of the charismatic, middle-class racists who seem to have been involved with the planning of this bombing. William Hodge left almost no trail. I can say for certain that he was born. I think he may be the W.D. Hodge that died in the 1970s and is buried out west of town, but I don’t know that for sure. The FBI had nothing to say about him in the files I’ve seen. The FBI has a little information about James Harris. He was a veteran in his late forties with a prosthetic left leg. He had, according to the FBI, eight children and a sixth-grade education. He was unemployed.

Vincent and Carroll Crimmons, we know a little more about. Vincent had a juvenile criminal record but seemed to have gotten his life together prior to the bombing. Carroll did not have an easy life after this arrest. He spent the rest of his life in and out of trouble for crimes ranging from DUI to child abuse.

Vincent was married to a Blackwell. The stringer for Life magazine sent word to his editors that J.B. Blackwell was Vincent’s brother-in-law. On the one hand, the only Blackwells living out along Whites Creek Pike were Vincent’s in-laws, so since J.B. reportedly lived out that way, he had to be related to that family. But if he was Vincent’s brother-in-law, he could not have been 42, as the papers reported, because Vincent’s mother-in-law was only 44 in 1957 and his father-in-law was not much older. No Blackwells who I could find had those initials. I’m going to continue to call him J.B. Blackwell, because I don’t have a better, more accurate way to identify this individual, but I want to be clear that either this is not his name, or he is not Vincent’s brother-in-law. “J.B. Blackwell” is, I think, an unintentional pseudonym bestowed by confused media.

The Crimmonses were, according to the Tennessean, dues-paying members of the Ku Klux Klan. But they were weird people to be Klansmen. First off, the Crimmons brothers’ parents are buried in Calvary Cemetery, which means their parents were Catholic, which suggests the Crimmonses were at least raised Catholic. That isn’t to say that they couldn’t have been racial terrorists—we know Emmett Carr had been working with Catholics—but if the Crimmonses were so outraged about school desegregation that they were willing to bomb a school, why wouldn’t they have bombed Father Ryan or Cathedral? Why wait years and bomb a public school?

The other odd thing is that Vincent Crimmons’s mother-in-law, Amanda Blackwell, supposed mother of the mysterious J.B. Blackwell, was a Collins from Bells Bend in rural Davidson County; her mother’s maiden name was Barnes, also from Bells Bend. The Barnes family and the Collins family are two of the Melungeon families that settled out in the bend in the 1800s. Tennessee Melungeon history is complicated, but what you need to know is that they weren’t always considered exactly white, and they faced persecution because of it.⁸⁵ Both the Barnes and Collins families have marked as their race either a W over an M in the 1910 census—meaning they had first been classified as Mulatto and then the census taker decided to classify them as white—or visa versa. Next to their names, the census taker has written either “Portuguese” or “Portuguese Indians,” as if he wanted to have some explanation for his bosses as to his confusion.

It’s not too hard to imagine why people living in a segregated society that haven’t always had all the benefits afforded to the average white person might become racists—as a way of proving their whiteness. And consider in particular how important being white would have been for someone in Bells Bend. There was a county school for white children in Scottsboro at the north end of the bend. The closest school for black children was clear in Bordeaux. Being perceived as white in rural Davidson County often literally meant your children could go to school and your family had easy access to public services. The extended families of these men had good motivation for being unimpeachably white.

On the other hand, people who leave no trace usually leave no trace because they were too poor or too poorly connected. Guys like this make good scapegoats. Who cares what happens to them?

Larry Brinton, who was on the police beat for the Nashville Banner that day, saw the police arrive at the jail with two suspects who he thought were brothers. He couldn’t say for sure if this was Vincent Crimmons and J.B. Blackwell, but as far as I can tell from newspaper reports, they were the only two men brought in together.

Brinton says he was standing near the entrance where the paddy wagons were brought into the jail, talking to a couple of police officers, when these men were brought in. Brinton recounts that a police officer asked the men, “Would you be willing to take a lie detector test?” This confused Brinton, because “I’m standing there, thinking what the hell’s going on? They don’t have no damn lie detector test here.”

The two men, not knowing this, agreed to take the test.

A half an hour or so after the men were taken inside for the “test,” Brinton followed. He made his way to where the men were being questioned. “They had this long table and they had this guy up on the table and officers had his legs and officers at the front of him were holding him down and paddling him.”⁸⁶ That was the test. Brinton says they passed.

The police also allegedly—though they never denied it—took a wooden board to Carroll Crimmons when they brought him in later.

FBI files confirm Brinton’s story of police brutality. The files also make clear that the police knew these guys were poor suspects almost as soon as they brought them into custody. Late in the evening of September 10, the special agent in charge (probably Lopez) sent an urgent teletype to headquarters explaining the situation in Nashville in the wake of the bombing. In part, it read:

Nashville papers today recited arrest five individuals by local police as possible suspects instant explosion, stating suspects car contained detonator and wire similar to explosive wire and also weapons and KKK lettering. In this connection Nashville PD arrested following individuals for refusing to move along from vicinity of Nashville school—Vensen Albert Crimmons, age thirty-two, James R. Harris, age forty-seven, J. B. Blackwell, age forty-two, Carol Crimmons, brother of Venson Crimmons, and W. D. Hodge. First three charged with unlawful possession of weapons in that two heavy wooden mallets and machete knife bearing “US Navy” were found in car. Last two individuals were charged with vagrancy. Suspects car did not contain detonators or explosive, and wire found therein is radio wire and not type used for detonation purposes. Nashville PD advises does not consider these individuals good suspects instant explosions.⁸⁷

Without the police files, it’s hard to nail down the exact timeline here, but what we’re left with seems to indicate that the beatings of these suspects (to try to get confessions) was taking place even as the police considered them poor suspects.

This is inexcusable. It borders on inexplicable, except that in our whole long history of racialized violence over education in Nashville, no white racist did anything that would intentionally hurt an innocent white bystander. For all John Kasper’s talk, I am certain that when he talked about shotguns and dynamite, most people—with the possible exception of Carrie Wray—thought he was talking about terrorizing Black people. Blowing up their houses, their schools. The police didn’t haul the Whites Creek guys in and beat them because the police were anti-racist. The police were shocked and pissed that anyone would dare bomb a white school, would dare scare white families, and would dare risk hurting white children. Literally, until that moment, Nashville thought racial terrorism harmed Black people and sometimes their white allies. Period. It had never dawned on white Nashville that segregationists or white people who hadn’t picked a side could be targeted.

These guys made great suspects because they were marginalized in so many ways—dirt poor, a couple Catholics, one not quite white, and probably new to the Klan.⁸⁸ They didn’t have the kinds of broader social support networks that would signal to the police that these were folks you should follow the rules for. And Nashville cops had more leeway with how rough they could get with suspects back then. But there was still a line, and beating someone with a piece of lumber was probably across it.

Beating someone with rich and powerful friends, friends tied into the national scene, tied into Vanderbilt’s prestige, was definitely way, way over the line. The Whites Creek gang did not appear to know they had such a friend, but when the Tennessee Federation for Constitutional Government caught wind of the police brutality, Jack Kershaw went down to the police station to look into things, then he went to the media to complain about the men’s treatment. The DA, Harry Nichol, did his best to keep Kershaw away from the alleged bombers, saying, according to the Tennessean, “They are strangers to you, Mr. Kershaw. You don’t have anything to do with this case.”⁸⁹ But Kershaw’s interest alone was too much heat for the DA to handle.

Kershaw’s accusations of police brutality hit the papers on September 20. On September 21, DA Nichol released Harris and the Crimmonses without bond. Nichol told the Tennessean this was because, “We want to see what a jury thinks is justice for Mr. Kasper. I think he should be tried before these men.”⁹⁰

They were never charged for the bombings.

During Kasper’s trial for inciting a riot, Vincent Crimmons claimed he never even heard Kasper advocating violence, even though Crimmons had attended Kasper’s rallies.

And that was that. As far as Nashville knew, those Whites Creek guys were the bombers, at the behest of John Kasper. The fact that the police never really considered them good suspects never made its way into the public consciousness. The bombing was never solved, but most everyone thought they knew what had happened.

The simple overlooked truth here is that John Kasper was a thorn in the side of the city, and he had few prominent friends. Emmett Carr, Nashville’s highest-ranking Klan leader, didn’t trust him. Donald Davidson loathed him. Until Hattie Cotton was bombed, it had not occurred to white Nashville that racists would endanger white children to get their way. The city was outraged and terrified. Kasper wasn’t a local, he wasn’t widely liked even by people who shared his goals, and he didn’t have any powerful local allies. If there had been an iota of evidence that Kasper bombed Hattie Cotton, he would have been tried for it.⁹¹

Other Potential Suspects in the Hattie Cotton Bombing

If we’re asking ourselves who would target a school and could easily recruit folks to bomb it, Carr’s the guy with the track record and the known connections. If Carr had appealed to Klavern No. 317 for help with the bombing of a school and then it ended up being a predominately white school, it explains why Klavern No. 317 was kicked out of the Klan that same month. It also explains why the police never really had any good suspects. It’s possible some or all (though I lean toward “some,” for reasons we’ll get into in a second) of the bombers came in from Chattanooga, with Chattanoogan dynamite that J.B. Stoner had paid for.

So, why does the idea persist that Kasper alone was responsible? First, it lets Nashville off the hook. Some “outside agitator” came into our peaceful town and ruined it. It wasn’t something neighbors did to each other, or would have even dreamed of doing to each other, until this charlatan started putting ideas into foolish heads.

But second, it seems obvious that whoever did this was someone who had been at Kasper’s rallies or on his mailing lists or hanging out with him. The circumstantial evidence points in Kasper’s direction because the bomber is someone near Kasper.

So, who was near Kasper?

Here’s who Judge Miller issued a restraining order against in the wake of the bombing: John Kasper’s pastor friend, Fred Stroud; John Mercurio, a racist pastor from out west who had preached at Kasper rallies; Wilson Lee Brown, who had been arrested at Fehr the night of the bombing; James Jarrell, who doesn’t seem to have existed, at least not by that name; Emmett Carr; Vincent Crimmons; Margaret Conquest, a white woman who had led the disturbances at Glenn School; J.A. Stinson and his wife, Mary, who led the demonstrations at Jones School and who were hosting John Mercurio; James Harris; and Paul McConnell.⁹²

McConnell, as far as I can tell, never comes back up. But there’s only one Paul McConnell in the city directories at this time—living on Delta Avenue in North Nashville, a block away from Buena Vista School and just a few blocks away from Jones School. This nonexistent James Jarrell character is curious. While it’s true that the courts decided he wasn’t a real person, or at least not a real person by this name, there were James Jarrells living in Nashville. None of them had connections to Kasper, though, as far as I can tell. But there was a Henry Jarrell, sometimes known as H.A. Jarrell, who ran for vice-mayor of Nashville in 1959 with Bessie Williams at the top of the ticket. John Kasper ran their campaign. And on September 15, 1957, Thomas Norvell called FBI agent Norwood and told him he had just remembered that his wife had been talking to a Mrs. Jarrell and a Mrs. Orman at a Kasper rally on September 5. “Mrs. ORMAN told them that she had seem some dynamite that had been brought into town and knew who had it. She did not say who had the dynamite or where she had seen it.”⁹³

Though Kasper primarily stayed with the Wrays that August, he had also spent some nights at the Ormans. Mrs. Orman would have been in a position to know what Kasper was up to, and here Norvell is handing the FBI the names of two witnesses with close ties to Kasper. Nothing in the file suggests the FBI talked to Mrs. Orman or Mrs. Jarrell.

Out of everyone in this story, Norvell appears to be the closest thing we have to a hero. He heard of a bomb plot, and he alerted authorities. But I suspect the answer to why he was never publicly given credit can be found in the fact that he knew what Klan members were up to and how to contact the FBI. If the FBI had a good source, they weren’t going to publicly out him and risk him being the victim of police violence. This might explain why the FBI was reluctant to tell the police about Reed and Norvell all along. If you need willing informants, turning them over to a police force known for beating people is not in your best interest.

But if you don’t tell the police when you know about a bomb plot against a school in their district, you’re going to make the police very angry. My guess is that the Nashville police were deeply pissed that the FBI had kept Reed and Norvell from them, and that, whether or not the FBI realized it, the force lost interest in working with the FBI on this case in any meaningful way after that.

The Confession the FBI Got

I think this explains why, when the FBI got a solid lead on the actual bomber at the end of 1957, the Nashville police blew them off. This is the memo about that good lead, dated January 8, 1958:

On December 30, 1957, Memphis Confidential Informant T-1 furnished the following information to SA FRANCIS W. NORWOOD at Nashville, Tennessee:

The informant advised that REDACTED talks freely about the use of dynamite. REDACTED states that he has some in his possession and exploded a dynamite cap in his garage on Thursday night, December 26, 1957, but did not explode any dynamite. He exploded the cap to demonstrate his ability to use dynamite equipment safely. REDACTED spoke of the Hattie Cotton School explosion and stated only thirteen sticks of dynamite were used on that particular job.

REDACTED further explained that in order to do so much damage with thirteen sticks of dynamite, bags of cement were used to cover the explosives. He stated further that if the authorities had looked closed enough they would have found dry cement all over the place. REDACTED had in his garage some bags of cement and stated they were like the ones used at the school. He claimed to have a small battery with a button on top for purposes of exploding dynamite which he kept in his truck. He stated that there were only three men on the Hattie Cotton School job, and that this particular school was picked because it was the school in Nashville which was not being watched closely. He stated that there was one Negro going to that school, the rest of the students being white.

REDACTED failed to state whether he had been paid for the job. He stated that he could do a job like that without being blown up himself because he had considerable leader wire and indicated that he had approximately 300 yards of this particular type of wire. He stated all that is done to set up a job is to roll out the wire and touch the battery. When asked if that is the way he did the job on the Hattie Cotton School, REDACTED laughed and said “you know I wouldn’t do anything like that.”

The informant pointed out that he could not tell whether REDACTED was lying or not. He also pointed out that REDACTED was drinking at the time that he made the above statements.

This information was furnished immediately to Lt. REX WHITE, Nashville Police Department, who is handling the investigation of the Hattie Cotton School explosion for that organization, Mr. TOMMIE KERKELES, Chief Investigator, Sheriff’s Office, Nashville, and Mr. WINFRED E. HOPTON, Director, Tennessee Bureau of Criminal Identification, Nashville.

Lt. WHITE, who conducted a crime scene search at the Hattie Cotton School at the time of the explosion, stated that he is sure that there was no dry cement at the school, nor were there any fragments of cement sacks at the scene of the explosion. He further stated that there was some doubt that the wire found at the scene of the explosion was dynamite wire as it may have been used by the telephone company or the intercommunications system at the school.⁹⁴

It appears, from a teletype sent to headquarters immediately after Norwood received this information, that it came to Norwood in the form of a letter. The letter isn’t in the file, but Norwood’s teletype includes a lengthy quote from it:

He demonstrated his ability to safely use it after I told him I was afraid of any explosive material. I suggested that he should contact the parties who desire the destruction of schools. He spoke of the Hattie Cotton school explosion and explained that only thirteen sticks of dynamite was used on the job. He further explained in order to do so much damage with thirteen sticks of dynamite, bags of cement was used to cover explosives, further stating that if the authorities had looked close enough they would have found dry cement all over the place, and pointing to some bags of cement under a work bench in his garage, he said just like that stuff there. He claims to have a small battery with a button on top for that purpose, in his truck. I asked how many it took for a job like that, and why they picked Hattie Cotton school, which was in East Nashville. He said there was only three men on that job, and that was the only school in Nashville not being watched so close.

[ …]

I ask REDACTED if they got a good price for job on school. He did not answer. I said it had to be for money or practice for there was no niggers going to that school. Yes there was REDACTED said; ther [sic] was one nigger going there. I said just the same I don’t understand how you do a job like that without getting blown up yourself. Hell I got enough leader wire to reach to Eighteenth and Buchanan he said. All you do is set up the job and roll out wire and touch the battery. I asked if that is why he did job on school—he laughed and said you know I wouldn’t do anything like that.⁹⁵

So, there’s a lot here. First, let me note that the cover letter that accompanied the memo seems to indicate that the letter writer and guy claiming to be the bomber were in the Klan: “Memphis Confidential Informant T-1 is REDACTED. He has not furnished sufficient information, which can be verified concerning the activities of REDACTED or the US Klans, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Inc., for a determination to be made as to his reliability.”

Next, is he providing information only the bomber could know? This is really hard to discern. We do know that Patricia Watson, who desegregated Hattie Cotton, registered on the first day of school. No one but her family knew she was going to be there until she was. After the school was bombed, her parents put her in an all-Black school. It is very possible that, even after the bombing, many racists in town weren’t really aware of why Hattie Cotton in particular was targeted. Certainly, by now, it is widely understood that Hattie Cotton was targeted because the police were guarding the schools where protesters had gathered that day and, since there had been few, if any, protesters at Hattie Cotton, there weren’t police there. But how widely was that understood at the time? I just can’t say for certain.

Then there’s the bit about the bomb—thirteen sticks of dynamite under bags of dry concrete. Lieutenant White’s claim that he found no evidence of dry concrete at the school makes no sense. Every picture of the entrance after the bombing shows an enormous amount of dust and debris. Those photos also show that, while the outside of the school was brick, the interior walls (at least the interior of the outside walls) were made of concrete blocks, many of which were destroyed in the blast. It wouldn’t have been unreasonable for White to say he couldn’t tell if there was evidence of dry concrete aside from the dust of the damaged bricks, but saying there was none when pictures show concrete dust is very strange. I don’t know what to make of it. It sure seems like White lied to the FBI, but it’s a lie that doesn’t make any sense. Pictures would have proven him wrong. Anyone who learned the school was constructed, in part, of concrete blocks would know there was concrete dust. So, I also think it’s plausible that this isn’t exactly what White told the FBI. He may have just said that he didn’t find any remnants of bags.

But I suspect what’s actually going on here is this: Nashville police were now withholding information from the FBI. And they had a lot of information.

The Confession the Fire Marshal Heard

On the night of January 10, 1958, there was a fire at 2103 and 2105 18th Avenue North, right across from the Jewish cemetery, right outside the city limits. A man named Wallace L. Rider owned the properties and Robert Bromley lived there. This was right next door to the Rider-Justin Garage, located at 1700 McDaniel Street, which was a known Klan hangout. The State Fire Marshal, perhaps the only competent investigative body in the state, was suspicious of the fires and suspected they were set in order to collect insurance on the buildings. On January 11, Chief Deputy State Fire Marshal O.O. Lee interviewed a witness, Frank Houchin.

Cast your mind way back to the first bombings we talked about, the destroyed truck scales. They seemed not to be related in any way, but it was still weird that the man convicted of them, Jesse Wilson, was never asked about these later bombings. Remember how part of Wilson’s defense was that Jack Jones and his friend were framing him, and that the friend, Frank Houchin, was blackmailing him? And remember how the bombing of his downtown terminal was linked to insurance fraud? Well, here’s Frank again, wrapped up in another fire that might be linked to insurance fraud.

Fire Marshal Lee asks Houchin how long he’s known the property owner, Wallace Rider, who Lee suspected was involved with the fires on his properties. Frank replies, “Let’s see, he says he was there when I was initiated into the KKK.” Frank then tells the fire marshal that Rider later came to Frank’s house to bring him all this Klan literature because Rider was quitting the Klan.

Q. Where did you get those pieces of [Klan] literature?

A. Rider brought them out to my house and turned them over to me telling me he was out, he had quit. He said he called [Lloyd] Dowdy, the Secretary, and told him he was bringing the stuff to me.

Q. He was mad because they wouldn’t be any more active and take any more drastic steps than they were taking, was he not?

A. Yes, sir. He claimed he was financing all the activities and even furnishing lumber to build the crosses and pay for the literature to have it printed.

Frank told the fire marshal that the day after Christmas, he and Rider hung out at the Rider-Justin Garage and drank. They talked about how to commit insurance fraud and Rider said he had a buddy named Slim who helped him do it. “Slim” was the nickname of James McKinley Thompson, a man who lived down in Alabama. Rider said, “he could drive about 120 miles and get him and bring him up here, let him do a job—dynamite or whatever—let him do the job and in six hours he could have him back in Alabama.”

Q. And it was on that occasion that [Rider] discussed the dynamiting of the Hattie Cotton School over in East Nashville?

A. That is right.

Q. And did he tell you that he and anybody else did that?

A. Let’s see exactly the way he put it nowhe told me

Q. Just a minute. After you mentioned this in your report about the school, you said he used 13 sticks, etc. You have got that in the report?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Did he tell you anybody else was with him?

A. He gave reference to Slim, James McKinley Thompson, as being with him. I tried to draw out of him who the other fellow was. At that point he told me: “You know I didn’t dynamite the Hattie Cotton School” and I said “Just about like you didn’t fake those robberies if that is what you mean” and he laughed and I said “I thought you did a pretty good job of it.” I asked him how he did all that damage with 13 sticks of dynamite and he said “If the authorities had looked close they would have found dry powdered cement all over the place because they had put that on the dynamite to hold the impact and make it do more damage by having the cement on it” and he pointed on the bench where there were four sacks.

[ …]

Q. Did he mention anybody else other than Slim?

A. I asked how many and he said there were three of them.

Q. But he never did call the other fellow’s name?

A. No, sir.

Q. Did he say anything about having any wire that was used to explode dynamite with?

A. I asked him how he did a job like that without getting hurt himself and he said he had enough wire to reach to 18th and Buchanan from his garage which was about two good city blocks and he had a battery in his truck with a button on top for that purpose.96

We can gather a few things from this. One is that Houchin was Memphis Confidential Informant T-1 for the FBI. Two, Houchin was working with the fire marshal in some similar capacity, since they make mention of him writing up reports. Three, the bomb crew had three people on it—Wallace Rider, Slim Thompson, and an unnamed man (possibly Stoner?). Four, even after Rider left the Klan for it not being violent enough, Houchin kept hanging out with him. He was not put off by Rider’s thirst for violence.

From what I’ve been able to find, Wallace Rider kept a low profile. He was arrested in 1952 for robbing a liquor store and a service station. But otherwise, there’s not much in the papers about him. There’s some indication, which I could not verify, that at some point he started going by William Rider instead of Wallace. If this is so, then his body was donated to Meharry Medical College when he died in 1998, which might be cosmic justice—if the man who terrorized Nashville’s Black community benefitted Nashville’s Black medical school in death.

Slim Thompson is interesting. He lived down in North Alabama, just outside of Florence, but he had family here in Nashville. The memo that accompanies the fire marshal’s interview with Houchin describes Thompson: “Height: 6’: Weight about 150 lbs; complexion – Red; Eyes – Blue; Hair – Brown; is of thin build, has his left thumb; left index and middle fingers missing or amputated as the result of a dynamite cap explosion when he was 10 years of age.”⁹⁷

Sound familiar? Take a look at the hand of the guy holding the flyer (you can see his face in the image at the top of the Preface). It’s not his left hand, but what are the chances of there being two guys in Nashville on the day of the Hattie Cotton bombing missing three fingers?

Piecing Together the Truth

If this history is a puzzle with many pieces missing, I think the FBI files and media reports fill in enough gaps that we can make some reasonable guesses as to what happened here.

We know, thanks to the letter from Carrie Wray and media reports of Kasper’s speeches, that Kasper had been talking about the use of dynamite. We know from Norvell and FBI reports that (once out-of-town Klansmen started to arrive) people began discussing forming a terror cell and blowing up a school. We know that two people in Kasper’s circle said they saw dynamite—Reed said he saw Kasper with it and Mrs. Orman, one of Kasper’s hosts, said she saw it. Mrs. Orman also said the dynamite had been “brought into town,” and we know that J.B. Stoner said he was responsible for getting the dynamite here. It seems a Chattanooga Klansman was in town making a bomb threat right after the Hattie Cotton bombing, which suggests that Stoner made arrangements for the dynamite to come into town with a Chattanooga Klansman/men. The other thing that suggests the involvement of the Chattanooga Klan is that we know they did something bad enough to get them kicked out of the Klan in September 1957—but there was no Klan violence in Chattanooga in September 1957. The only place in Tennessee that had any violence that might have caused Klan leaders to freak out was here in Nashville.

About that freak-out, though, there was one other factor we need to consider: the presence of Asa Carter. At the time of the Hattie Cotton bombing, Asa Carter was leading a Klan splinter group, Original Ku Klux Klan of the Confederacy. Before that, he had been the head of a splinter White Citizens’ Council group most famous for attacking and trying to kill singer Nat King Cole when he was on stage. Carter’s Klan was very violent, to put it mildly. In the short time it existed, between 1956 and 1958, Klan members shot at each other numerous times and they gruesomely attacked a Black man, Judge Edward Aaron, on September 2, 1957.98 Carter was not present for the attempted murder, likely because he was here in Nashville helping to organize a school bombing. But he was the leader of the group. Aaron’s assault would not have happened without Carter’s knowledge and permission.⁹⁹

If I had to make an informed guess about why the US Klan started kicking out Klaverns in September 1957, I would say it’s likely that it was not just the targeting of a vastly predominately white elementary school, but the targeting of that school with the help of Asa Carter, the leader of a group of violent renegades who had the authorities breathing down their necks.

This leaves us with Kasper calling for bombings, but not quite knowing how to make one happen. But Stoner knows. He makes arrangements to get dynamite here and, I think it’s likely, gets Carr on board to provide some bombers, possibly an experienced Chattanooga bomber.

But, since Kasper was run out of town by the end of September and no more schools were bombed, well, no harm, no foul, right?

Oh, wait …