American Evolution Podcast

NARRATOR

At Lynchburg’s Old City Cemetery, long ago called the Methodist Cemetery, is the grave of Mariah Wilson. On her tombstone, beneath the image of a dove and her name are these words: “… killed at Court Street Baptist Church on the night of October 16, 1878, aged 17 years and two months.”

Maria’s tombstone prompts some questions: 

On her tombstone, beneath the image of a dove and her name,

First of all, who was Maria Wilson? Who were her parents? Did she have brothers and sisters? What did she do for a living?

She was 17 years old in 1878, which means she was born in about 1861. Had she been enslaved?

And how did she die?

Was she murdered at the church (a story we’re all too familiar with today)? Did she have an accident?

What is the history of Court Street Baptist Church? What role did it play in the community?

What happened to Maria, and how might her story shed light on the lives of African-Americans in late and post Reconstruction-era Lynchburg, Virginia? What was life like for a young African American woman, living in the shadows of enslavement and in the grips of Jim Crow.

The news of what happened on the evening of October 16, 1878, was reported in newspapers all over the United States and as far away as England, Scotland and Wales, under headlines like, “The Lynchburg Calamity,” “The Fatal Panic,” “Terrible Disaster,” and “Trampled to Death.”

REPORTER 1 (Lynchburg News, Lynchburg, Va., October 17, 1878):

Court Street Baptist Church was crowded last night to its utmost capacity to witness a marriage ceremony conducted by the pastor Rev. Mr. Morris. Every seat on the floor and in the gallery was filled, and the aisles were packed with witnesses to the event.

After the ceremony was concluded and the bridal party had retired, religious services were commenced, when an alarm was raised that the gallery was falling, followed by the cry of “Fire!”

REPORTER 2 (Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, November 9, 1878):

… someone shouted, “The gallery is falling!” This alarm was followed by cries of “Fire!” when an indescribable panic instantly seized the large audience. There was a general rush to the doors and windows. … On the second floor, those who first reached the head of the stairs were so pressed on by the panic-stricken crowd that they were thrown down and those who followed shared the same fate, until they were piled almost to the head of the stairs.

Upon this mass of writhing humanity the throng that followed trod. Men and women rushed over it, careless of everything, so that they made their escape. The consequences were terrible.

Many persons were either trampled or smothered to death, and more were badly wounded. Some, who were near the bottom bore a weight which every moment threatened to crush their lives out.

Many, seeing the obstruction of the stairway, jumped from second or third story windows …

REPORTER 3 (The Iola Register, Iola, Kan., October 26, 1878):

The colored minister shouted for them not to jump out, but out they leaped like sheep, falling on top of each other as they landed.

NARRATOR

One of the people who jumped from an upper window was Maria Wilson. A reporter later imagined what Maria went through that night in her final moments.

REPORTER 4 (Lynchburg News, Lynchburg, Va., October 18, 1878)

The view from the window through which Maria Wilson jumped to instant death is fearful. Whether her neck was broken by concussion against the fence or pavement is not known, but certainly 99 in a hundred would never know afterwards that they had attempted the leap.

NARRATOR

What happened at the church that night? What caused the fire? Did it cause the building to collapse? Was it arson? A 19th-century domestic terrorist? It was reconstruction, after all. Was it the Klan?

Our resident historian, Dr. Kelley Fanto Deetz, discussed these and more questions with some local community members.

KELLY

When you hear the name “Mariah Wilson”, what comes to mind?

VIVIAN

Well, it comes to mind that Mariah Wilson leaped from the window and that’s how she lost her life. And I had seen her name memorialized on the windows in the back of the church, back of the pulpit and really didn’t know the story about her as much as I do [until I came] to Court Street Baptist Church [in] 1962. So, it is with my readings that I found out the information about how the tragedy happened, and all of the anecdotes surrounding the lives of all of the eight ladies who lost their lives. 

JOHN

The story goes that lots of people [are] trying to get out the door of the church, there was just one door, one small door and there was a wedding going on and something cracked in the church and somebody yelled “fire” and everybody tried to get out of that door and people they say eight people were crushed. 

VIVIAN

There was an anecdote about the wedding itself, about the brick that was thrown, that was one idea about what happened. And, it was said that a young man was also in love with the bride and he was the one that perhaps said “fire”. And once anyone is in a group like that, there were more than 2000 people in the church and only one exit, so you can imagine what it was like for someone to scream fire. Everyone wants to get out and save their own lives. 

JOHN

My mother had lots of anecdotes. One was the other person who was in love with the bride was a white merchant and he got accused of actually doing that, but that was never really published. 

KELLY

Sometimes the stories that are not published are the ones that have a little bit of truth to them too. 

VIVIAN

That’s exactly right.

KELLY

So, what is the history of this church? So I’ve heard some stories about how there was this original location and then now it’s moved, so where was the original church? When was it founded? Does anybody, do you know this? 

VIVIAN

Well, yes. The original, actually in 1815, First Baptist Church, which is located on 11th and Court Streets, allowed slaves to worship with them. Then in 1843, they met as a group and decided there was too many black people that worshipped in there and they needed to have a separate church. So that’s when Court Street, it was called the African Baptist Church. And the first church, it actually burned down and so the tragedy with this tragedy and all of that was this was the second time something had happened. 

KELLY

So during the period of the late, or during the late 19th Century, you got a lot of these, you know, black-owned establishments popping up. You got these HBCUs being built for, you know, educating newly freed African Americans. You got these churches popping up. How important is it that that happened and how important is that history here for people in Virginia? How do we remember this and how do we make people realize how important those institutions were for not just Africans Americans but for Virginia as a whole?

VIVIAN

Well I think it’s very important, especially the newer congregation, the younger people. So many of them don’t really know their history, and we don’t have black history taught in the high schools as we did when we were segregated. And to me, it’s a terrible thing to happen, not to know something about your history. And when I read the history of Lynchburg, it was very similar to the history in other southern cities. The tobacco was so important in order of making a living, and they wouldn’t of been having tobacco factories if [it] were not for the slaves to do the work. And the fact that in 1815 the baptist church allowed black people to worship there, to me that was very important, but during that time as well, it was against the law in Virginia to teach black people to read and write. 

NARRATOR

Next, Kelley talks with a local history professor for another perspective on the Court Street Baptist Church Panic.

KELLY

So I wanna ask you about what life would of been like in Virginia during her lifetime. So she was born in 1861 and she died in 1878, what was going on politically, culturally during that period for African Americans. 

JOHN

Well oh my God, what wasn’t going on? She’s born in 1861 apparently in August of 1861. Virginia had seceded from the Union in April of ’61, and the capital of the Confederacy had been moved from Alabama to Richmond in May of 1861. So, presumably she’s born into slavery, but we don’t even know that for sure. But she wasn’t enslaved for very long, because the emancipation proclamation comes along, takes effect in January of ’63. On the “if she was in Lynchburg the entire time” then she wouldn’t of really had her freedom until the war ended because Lynchburg was never really occupied by Union forces, but at the latest, she was 4 years old when she became free. What freedom meant really was the whole point of reconstruction after the war, what does freedom mean for African Americans. 

So, that’s the world her early childhood was spent in, this revolutionary period when almost everything was up for grabs. We have to realize that there was no other nation in the history of the world where so many people had been the property of other people one year and then just four years later, they were completely free and a few years after that, by 1870, they had equal, political and civil rights. That was never done in any other slave society in the world. In Virginia, what we call “reconstruction” lasted for five years, from 1865-1870. So, she’s nine years old when reconstruction effectively ends in Virginia. And what that means is that between 1865 and 1870, anti-Confederate, what we would call “Liberals” now, people who were progressive, believed that black people deserved some rights, they were in power in Congress and they were in power in the southern states, in the ex-Confederate states.

During that 5-year period, three amazing things were added to the Constitution. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery in 1865. The 14th Amendment in 1868 provided for black citizenship and said that the Federal Government could intervene on behalf of the citizen if ever a state denied the rights of the citizen, regardless of color. And then in 1870, black people, black men excuse me, were given the vote nationwide. So, all that happens within 5 years of the end of slavery itself. So, she’s nine years old when reconstruction ends, and what reconstruction ending means is that Conservatives, ex-Confederates take control of the Virginia legislature. So, once that happens then there’s push back against the progressive achievements of reconstruction.

NARRATOR

Because we don’t have a time machine, we don’t know exactly what Maria experienced that night. We don’t know the thoughts that were running through her head as she tried to escape the church.

But one way to imagine these things is through reenactments and historical fiction. Through these, we can bring the story to life in ways the written record cannot.

With that said, we’ll let Maria tell her story.

MARIA

It was the 16th of October, 1878, and my friends and I were on our way to the Colored Baptist Church on Court Street to see Mary Rives and Jack Averett get married. It was to be the wedding of the year, and I was so excited because everyone was supposed to be there.

Oh, and sure enough, when we walked in to church, I saw all the seats on the floor had already been taken! And my heart just sank because I knew exactly where we were going to have to sit…in that horrible, decrepit old gallery.

But even though the thought of being all the way up there made my stomach turn sour, nothing was going to keep me from seeing that wedding.

So, I swallowed my fear, made it up the stairs, and sat down like there wasn’t a worry in my head.

Ah, but when the ceremony started, I completely forgot about how scared I’d been. The whole event was beautiful, and so was Mary. She wore the most elegant, ivory dress, with beads and lace all over it.

I remember thinking, “That’s exactly the way I want my wedding dress to be. Fancy and beaded and layer after layer of the finest material.”

Afterwards, while Pastor Morris went on with the revival services and I was still dreaming about my wedding gown, out of nowhere, I hear this loud “Pop!” that sounded like glass breaking.

The rest of the people in the gallery heard it, too, because we all moved at the same time to see where the noise had come from.

Well, when we did this, I could hear our entire weight shift and then the balcony suddenly made this wretched groaning and cracking sound, like the floor beneath our feet had woken up from a great nap and was stretching its boards.

See, if you had heard the way that gallery creaked, how it sounded like it was splintering and falling apart that very moment, you would understand why we all panicked.

Someone yelled, “It’s gonna collapse!” and another shrieked, “Fire!” and then it seemed like the entire congregation started screaming at once.

People were running everywhere and pushing each other, trying to get out of that church before it fell apart or caught fire.

My friend Millie and I got ready to run, too, but as we turned to go down the stairs, we could tell they were all backed up with people and there was there was no way we were getting out that way.

I remember seeing this old man, wide-eyed and paralyzed with fear, standing in the middle of the exit to the steps and people were just pushing right past him, no one offering to help.

There was a moment when he looked right at me, his eyes pleading…and then someone shoved him down real hard and the old man just disappeared under the sea of bodies.

Then more and more people started piling up on each other in the stairwell and I could see some were getting trampled and hurt really bad and I just knew that old man couldn’t have survived under all that.

Through it all, I couldn’t get the image of me in a wedding dress out of my head. Except this time, the dress I was imagining was all ripped and torn from being twisted up in the jagged remains of the gallery.

The more I thought of not being able to wear that dress, and not living to see my wedding day, the more I knew I had to get out of there.

And as I could hear the tortured screams of the people being crushed in that stairwell, I knew I had to find another way out.

As I was turning around to look for something—anything!—out of nowhere I see my father’s friend Henry ram his shoulder right into one of the church’s large, pane-glass windows, shattering it to pieces, and then he proceeds to jump…right…out…of…it.

Millie and I rushed to the windowsill, and just as we got there and looked out—it was so far up, at least 30 or 40 feet high—we could see Henry hit the ground, and then get right up like nothing was hurt on him, though it did look like he messed up his ankle real bad.

That was it. I had found my escape.

I grabbed Millie’s hand, looked her in the eyes, and she understood immediately what I wanted to do. By then, a few other people in the gallery noticed what Henry had done, and I could hear someone shout, “We gotta jump!” and they started to run towards us.

Well, I was so afraid they were going to shove me out of that window before I had a chance to steady myself and go out on my own, I squeezed Millie’s hand real tight and we stepped up onto the window ledge, looked at each other and without another thought, just…jumped.

(pause)

I tried to land on my feet, but Millie got twisted up in me and before I could right myself, we hit the ground. I saw her face smack hard against the pavement and the sound it made was all wrong.

I tried to aim for the grass, but I had jumped too far and hit my head right on that beautiful, wrought iron fencing I had always admired every time I came to church.

The last thing I remember seeing was more people jumping out that window. I wanted to tell them to “Stop!,” but I was dead before the word left my lips.

My biggest regret, though, was that I’ll never be able to wear that beautiful wedding dress I had been dreaming about, and that I never lived to see my wedding day.

NARRATOR

Maria was killed that night, along with 8 other women. Dozens were injured. In addition to Maria, the dead included:

Adeline Burks, a 50-year-old domestic worker

16-year-old Ann Cox

Mary Henry, a 60-year-old cook

14-year-old Emma Powell

19-year-old Virginia Robertson

Maria Ransom, 19

and

Millie Wood, a 26-year-old cook

Next to each name, the local Board of Health recorded a three-word cause of death: stampede at church.

Little did they know, at the time, however, that the building was not collapsing. It wasn’t on fire, either. Newspapers later blamed the panic on falling plaster in what was said to be a condemned building or a mischievous boy with a peashooter who had broken some glass. Whatever, the reason, there was nothing to fear that night but the outcome was tragic nonetheless.

American Evolution, Virginia to America, 1619 to 2019 celebrates the 400-year history of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Through public events, legacy projects, and initiatives like this podcast, American Evolution commemorates the people and historical events that occurred in Virginia and continue to shape who we are in the Commonwealth today.

For more information about the American Evolution celebration, visit AmericanEvolution2019.com. To learn more about the “Little Did They Know” podcast, and for photos, extras and other information relating to today’s episode, visit LittleDidTheyKnow.com.