A resolution apologizing for the U.S. Senate's past failure to fight anti-black violence, passed by the Senate this past week, may bring a little-known chapter in Utah history to light.
Carbon County is believed to be the site of the last lynching in the American West — and the justice system failed to prosecute any of the 11 men arrested in connection with it.
Robert Marshall, a black coal miner from Arkansas, was hanged on June 18, 1925. Although no trial was ever held, Marshall was believed to have shot J. Milton Burns, a watchman for Utah Fuel Co., at Castle Gate three days earlier. Officials at the time believed the shooting resulted from a grudge.
After the watchman was shot, posses were organized to look for Marshall. Two young boys reportedly saw the incident. When Burns died the next day, the search intensified.
Marshall reportedly tried to find safety in the newspaper-covered shack of an elderly black man named George. George, afraid he would be implicated, turned Marshall over to the authorities. Few blacks lived in Carbon County at the time, according to Deseret Morning News archives.
The posse loaded Marshall into a car headed for Price. The procession of cars swelled to about 40, and the group showed signs of becoming a mob. When the sheriff arrived, the group overpowered him, according to the archives.
The sheriff met the procession in Price, put a deputy in the car with Marshall and headed to Castle Dale in Emery County for reinforcements.
According to several accounts, by the time the lynching took place, the crowd had swelled to as many as 4,000. Marshall was hanged from a limb of a tall cottonwood tree.
When the sheriff arrived, he commanded the posse to take Marshall down, but as he attempted to remove the noose, Marshall made a noise. The mob then hanged him a second time to make certain he was dead, according to the paper's archives.
Eleven men were arrested on the insistence of then-Gov. George Dern and a grand jury was called. A total of 124 witnesses was called before the grand jury, but each one said they couldn't remember anything — despite the best efforts of Fred W. Keller, a young district attorney.
Although the Ku Klux Klan was not officially involved in the lynching, it "was common knowledge" that the 11 men indicted were Klansmen, according to Deseret Morning News archives.
The Senate's resolution apologizes to victims such as Marshall and "expresses deepest sympathies and most solemn regrets of the Senate to the descendants of victims of lynching, the ancestors of whom were deprived of life, human dignity and the constitutional protections accorded all citizens of the United States."
E-mail: twalquist@desnews.com