Frank Foukal Lynching - Part 3

     It's uncertain today whether she killed three people or eight or 18.

     Whatever, when she killed Walter "Red" Eldridge on Sept. 12, 1916, in east Tennessee, they hung her the following day. "She" was "Big Mary," rumored to be the largest elephant in captivity and perhaps the biggest star in Sparks World Famous Shows, a traveling circus owned by Charles Sparks, who later sold out to Ringling Bros.

     The details concerning the hanging of the 5-ton elephant are a mixture of fact and folklore after nearly a hundred years, but the hanging of "Big Mary" is a historical fact. When the elephant's trainer was killed in Kingsport, Tenn., the animal was taken by rail to Erwin, Tenn., after attempts to shoot "Big Mary" for her murderous ways proved to no avail. In Erwin they hung the elephant with a huge chain suspended from a railroad yard derrick. Perhaps as many as 5,000 people turned out for the show, including, by some reports, most of the town's children.

     The "lynching" of a 10,000-pound elephant was freakish and odd enough to make it into Ripley's Believe It or Not back in those days. While the subject of east Tennessee's vigilante justice in this case was unique to say the least, the method of death was all too familiar in the early years of the 20th century. From the end of the American Civil War, people – "mobs" – taking justice into their own hands resulted in one of the ugliest chapters in American history. As previously noted, lynching was so prevalent that by 1918 President Woodrow Wilson was appealing for an end to the violence.

     The word "lynch" readily brings to mind a rope. It also brings to mind the wanton violence that was directed by and large at blacks in the South but not exclusively so. Truth is, lynchings occurred in the North and West as well. Whites were lynched too, though white victims numbered far less than black ones. Only a few states have histories that don't include deaths that resulted from lynchings, be they from hanging, shooting, burning, castration or torture.

     The lynching of Czech settler Frank Foukal of Silverhill in 1919 is an instance where a lynching doesn't fit the modern conception of the word. First, he was a white man. Second, he was shot by the mob that broke into his jail cell. But a question to be asked about the Foukal lynching is one based on an observation by Bill Young in his biographical story "Czech Mate," which is based on letters and other correspondence of Czech people who settled in Silverhill in the early 20th century.

     Young notes in his book that for some people "Bohemian" (Czech) was the same as "German" in the days leading up to and during World War I. He also notes that Baldwin County was a place for "hot tempers to start trouble."

     Is that a suggestion that the circumstances leading to Robert Bishop's shooting death by Frank Foukal over a $55 mule and Foukal's subsequent lynching by a Baldwin County mob were grounded in some kind of ethnic hatred? Young's observation concerning an alleged Bohemian-German connection in the minds of some and "hot tempers" comes in his narrative just prior to his account of Frank Foukal's dispute with Robert Bishop over the mule. Certainly that alone isn't sufficient evidence to prove anything one way or the other concerning underlying motives or impulses in this one lynching incident, that is, beyond two men arguing over the dollar value of a mule. If taken in the context of what was going on in the country as a whole, however, a picture emerges of what it was like back then.

     Kenneth H. Zezulka, consul of the Czech Consulate in New Orleans, knows Silverhill and the "Little Bohemian Hall" well. He's been in town to talk with people like Frankie Kucera who are interested in seeing the landmark building repaired and returned to a place of prominence. Zezulka believes that Czechs most likely faced some degree of discrimination in the World War I era, including here in Baldwin County. "I'd almost be sure of it," he said recently.

     Zezulka's opinion isn't based on historical facts from the First World War but personal experiences of his family around the time of the Second World War. His parents came to this country from Bohemia and settled in Detroit.

     "My parents told me there were times we were thought to be Germans," Zezulka said. "We kind of look like Germans and have German mannerisms."

     According to Zezulka, the word "Czechoslovakia" was a source of confusion as well. Prior to 1918 the Czech and Slovak peoples, different in many ways, were part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was President Woodrow Wilson who, in Zezulka's word, "cobbled" the name from the two peoples and created confusion as a result. The Slovak people believed there should have been a hyphen in "Czechoslovakia" to show that the cobbled word consisted of two separate groups of people, Zezulka said. He notes that his mother was born in Bohemia but was classified "Slovak" when she got to this country.

     "Immigration agents didn't have a clue," Zezulka said.

     By World War II there was even more confusion when a portion of Czechoslovakia – Sudetenland – contained millions of Germans who wanted to be a part of Germany, he points out.

     "It was probably just a lack of knowledge," Zezulka said of whatever degree of discrimination he feels Czech immigrants like Frank Foukal probably experienced in Baldwin County as a result of being confused with Germans during wartime 95 years ago.

     To begin to understand the times in question where justice or the lack of it was concerned, consider the movies.

     It was 1915 when a landmark silent movie appeared. D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation" was like no other film Hollywood had ever produced. It was longer, made more money, and employed creative and artistic elements that were revolutionary. The movable camera was one of those innovations. Griffith's film was controversial too. It contained skewed notions about blacks, romanticized the institution of slavery and portrayed the Ku Klux Klan in heroic terms. "Birth of a Nation" is generally recognized as one of the great films of all time due to its groundbreaking innovations. Yet, to this day, a showing of the film is apt to draw fire from individuals and groups who are offended by Griffith's view of post-Civil War history as portrayed in "Birth of a Nation." In its day, however, the film made Griffith a legend and brought wealth and fame to the likes of Lillian Gish and the author of the book on which the film was based.

     Two years after Griffith's landmark film, another film appeared, this one getting far different "reviews." Robert Goldstein's "The Spirit of 76," a film about the American Revolution, portrayed the British in a less than favorable light. It was the year the U.S. entered the First World War and Britain was an ally. Federal authorities concluded that Goldstein was pro-German and his movie was a piece of propaganda. The following year, in 1918, he was arrested under the Espionage Act and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

     It was a time of drawing lines in America.

     Continue to part 4, Vigilante justice widespread at time Frank Foukal was killed.