JUSTICE LONG DELAYED
GAVEL GAMUTÂ By Jim Redwine
I grew up in Osage County, Oklahoma but until 2006 I had never heard of the Tulsa Massacre nor the Black man whose head was chopped off and thrown into a spring north of Pawhuska. I lived in Posey County, Indiana for many years before 1990 which is when I first learned of the Black men who were murdered on the campus of the Posey County Courthouse.Â
While I occasionally heard the whispered rumors of murdered Osages when I lived in Pawhuska I only learned of the 19th-century massacre of a band of peaceful Shawnee Indians in Posey County about the same time I began to investigate the lynchings at the courthouse. My personal experiences in Osage County, Oklahoma and Posey County, Indiana drew me into the colliding similarities of how the legal systems of Oklahoma and Indiana dealt with the victims and the perpetrators as minor inconveniences.
I began research into the Posey County murders while I was the sitting Circuit Court Judge in the courthouse that was the scene of the injustices done in the autumn of 1878. In 2006 my childhood friend, Dick Surber, who had bought the ranch property that included the spring, told me the story of how a white woman and a Black man had an affair while Oklahoma was still Indian Territory. According to Dick, who was a school teacher and an amateur Osage County historian, the woman’s husband caught the lovers at the spring and murdered them. The cuckolded husband chopped off the Black man’s head and threw the head in the spring, ergo the politically incorrect name the locals gave to the spring.
In 2008 Peg and I published our historical novel JUDGE LYNCH! in which some of the survivors of the 1878 Posey County pogrom had fled to Indian Territory. Fairly soon after the publication of JUDGE LYNCH!, Peg and I began to work on a sequel. This new historical fiction novel draws upon events in both states. When Crystal Collins, who worked in the Posey County Clerk’s Office, heard I was working on a sequel to the book that had taken me 17 years to write, Crystal asked, “Judge, do you have another 17 years?†As Crystal is a friend and a sweet person I am sure she did not mean anything untoward. Regardless, it turned out I did complete the sequel LAST WEEK!
Unanimous for Murder carries on with the characters from JUDGE LYNCH! plus the new ones from Oklahoma. Peg and I will be signing copies at the Redwine Family Jam Session and Jamboree at the Constantine Theater in Pawhuska between 12:00 noon and 6:00 p.m. on Friday and Saturday the 16th and 17th of July 2021. My family and some friends will be playing music and singing songs as well as showing my sister Shirley Redwine’s fabulous Cavalcade Rodeo themed paintings! Shirley is our family’s rodeo cowgirl who competed in the Cavalcade herself a year or two ago!
The beautifully restored Constantine Theater will have its doors open to the public for free with concessions for sale to help support the Constantine. Please come by and visit or join in, and as always, you can check out our website, www.jamesmredwine.com, “Like/Follow†us on Facebook & Twitter at JPegRanchBooks&Knitting or find the new book at www.Amazon.com.
Hope to see you at the Constantine Theater, 110 W. Main Street, Pawhuska, Oklahoma
July 16 and 17, 2021 from 12:00 noon to 6:00 p.m. during the Cavalcade!
Free Public Jam Session July 17, 2021 from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m.
