Say Her Name: Julia Hayden, Black Teacher/White Death

Julia Hayden was a seventeen year old set to the exciting task of beginning her career as a teacher of young Black children in Tennessee. August was back-to-school time for the kids. It was also a time when groups like the White League and Ku Klux Klan would burn schools, whip children on their way to class, and kill teachers. On August 22, 1874 two white men came to the house Julia Hayden was staying at and killed her.

The White League, the latest manifestation of the Ku Klux spirit, was a growing force in Tennessee that summer and many African Americans saw her killing as part of the group’s war against Black literacy. Many white journalists disagreed, saying that the killers had merely wanted to rape the teenager, as had been their right during slave times, and that when she had resisted, they killed her. They argued, that this slaughter of a teacher, who had after all been born a slave, had nothing to do with race at all. It was only about a couple of white men wanting to have their pleasure with a Black girl.

Frederick Douglass did not see racial ambiguity in the killing of the teenage teacher. His newspaper, the New National Era, saw her murder as the latest manifestation of terror attacks by the Klan and White League against Black education.

From: New National Era October 15, 1874

Harper’s Weekly, one of America’s most read newspapers, humanized Hayden with a portrait, as well as a sketch of her life. The paper described her as a girl who had sought out education for herself, and who was enrolled in college at the time of her killing. She had wanted to spread education throughout the Black community and had been willing to risk going to a rural school where she would be exposed to the dangers of torture or assassination.

Using a photograph of Hayden, Harper’s created an etching of Julia Hayden that hundreds of thousands of Americans saw. So many of the brave Black men and women who brought literacy to former slaves and their children are nameless and faceless now, and their role in social revolution forgotten, but we know what Julia looked like because she died violently.

Harper’s Weekly October 3, 1874

Harper’s described the killing:

The Black community where Julia had lived before she went off to teach sent her father and brother to Tennessee Governor John C. Brown to demand justice. Brown was a former Confederate Major General and he hailed from Pulaski, Tennessee, the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan. Here is the petition:

Daily Union and American

Wednesday, Sep 02, 1874

Nashville, TN

Page: 5

On the night she was killed, Julia Hayden was staying at the home of Emery Lowe and his wife. The Lowe’s gave this testimony concerning the circumstances of the killing at the Coroner’s Inquest:

Commercial Appeal

Friday, Aug 28, 1874

Memphis, TN

Vol:34

Page:2

When Julia’s menfolk were passing through Nashville with her body they spoke to a reporter from the Nashville Banner and described the killing.

Commercial Appeal

Friday, Aug 28, 1874

Memphis, TN

Vol:34

Page:2

The following year, African Americans in Tennessee convened a convention to discuss emigrating en masse to the west to get away from the growing racial violence in the state.  They warned whites that unless they were protected they would take their labor elsewhere. The convention’s resolutions cited Julia Hayden’s killing as one reason Blacks no longer felt safe in their native state.

Nashville Union and American May 21, 1875

An example of the sort of story which both depoliticized the killing and blamed it on Black people can be found in this reprehensible article from the New York Tribune. The Tribune had once championed civil rights, but by the 1870s it took the position that Reconstruction needed to end and that normalcy had returned to the South. In this article, the author basically says that Black women are whores and that this was merely an outburst of violence by two frustrated white would-be customers: