Norah Parden practiced law in Chattanooga at the turn of the century.
(Editor's note: Last of three parts)
Ed Johnson was found guilty of raping Nevada Taylor on Feb. 9, 1906. He continued to declare his innocence, but Johnson's lawyer, W.G. Thomas, convinced him to waive his right to appeal, telling Johnson an appeal would be denied and a delay might result in a mob descending on the jail to lynch him.
Lawyer Lewis Shepherd contended an appeal for a new trial was warranted due to errors in the first trial. However, when Johnson told County Judge Samuel McReynolds he felt "everything possible had been done" for him, Shepherd was forced to end his efforts. Johnson was sentenced to hang on March 13.
The day after the sentencing, Johnson's father visited lawyers Noah Parden and Styles Hutchins and asked them to take the case. Parden was reluctant. Though convinced of Johnson's innocence, Parden feared the impact on their practice. Hutchins disagreed, invoking the biblical injunction: "To those whom much has been given, much is expected." Parden reluctantly agreed.
On Feb. 13, Parden and Hutchins filed a motion for a new trial. Citing errors in the original trial, they contended his previous lawyers improperly abandoned him by convincing Johnson to waive his right to appeal. Judge McReynolds denied the request. Admonishing them, he asked, "What can two Negro lawyers do that the defendant's previous lawyers were unable to achieve? ... Do you think a Negro lawyer could possibly be smarter or know the law better than a white lawyer?"
Parden and Hutchins' appeal to the Tennessee Supreme Court was denied. Their appeal to the U.S. District Court also was denied; however, the District Court granted a stay of execution.
Appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, on March 17 Parden appeared before Justice John Harlan, citing violations of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments. Parden was the first black lawyer to serve as lead counsel before the Court. Harlan granted a stay of execution, pending review by the whole Court.
Styles Hutchins practiced law in Chattanooga at the turn of the century.
News spread quickly through Chattanooga. The next evening a mob of angry men surrounded the jail. There was no resistance. Sheriff Joseph Shipp gave his deputies, except one jailer, the night off and ordered prisoners removed from the floor where Johnson was held. The sheriff came to the jail during the riot and complied with a suggestion that he go into the bathroom.
The men took Johnson from his cell to the Walnut Street Bridge. Putting a noose around his neck, they demanded a confession. Johnson professed his innocence, further infuriating the mob. They hauled him up. When he did not die, they shot him more than 50 times. One bullet pierced the rope. Johnson fell to the bridge and was shot five more times.
Chattanooga white leaders decried the lynching. Many claimed the Supreme Court intervention incited the mob leading to the lynching.
On May 28, the U.S. Attorney General filed a petition charging Sheriff Shipp, six deputies and 19 mob leaders with contempt of the Supreme Court. The trial was the only criminal trial ever conducted before the Court. Shipp and two others were sentenced to 90 days in jail, the others were given 60 days. All were released after 60 days and returned to Chattanooga where they were greeted by 10,000 cheering supporters.
As Parden predicted, Johnson's case affected their practice. Black clients would not hire them, fearing the anger of white judges. Their office was stoned. Parden's home was threatened with fire when a mob burned down their neighbor's home by mistake. Both men left Chattanooga. The Rev. Thomas and Ellen McCallie sheltered Mattie Parden until she could join her husband.
Hutchins moved to Oklahoma and started a newspaper. He never practiced law again.
Read more Chattanooga History Columns
- Gaston: Paul John Kruesi was Edison's right-hand man
- Robbins: The old Richardson's house and the Civil War
- Gaston: James Williams was a man of the world
- Raney: Mason Evans, the 'Wild Man of the Chilhowee'
- Gaston: The legacy of Adolph Ochs endures
- Martin: Ed Johnson said, 'I have a changed heart,' the day before his lynching in Chattanooga on 1906
- Thomas: The inventiveness of Judge Michael M. Allison
- Moore: Chattanooga's first Chinese community
- Summers, Robbins: Chattanooga's Tuskegee Airman - Joseph C. White
- McCallie: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 says so!
- Gaston: John McCline's Civil War - from slave to D.C. parade
- Raney: Exploring Chattanooga businesses in the Green Book
- Elliott: Remembering the Freedmen's Bureau in Chattanooga
- Gaston: Nancy Ward was a beloved, respected Tennessean
- Martin: Prohibition - the noble experiment
- Elliott: 'A shameful, disgraceful deed': The destruction of the Sewanee cornerstone
- Gaston: Robert Cravens was ironmaster, Chattanooga area's first commuter
- Robbins: Dr. T.H. McCallie's Christmas 1863
- Robbins: Journalist writes of a trip to Missionary Ridge in 1896
- Summers, Robbins: Mine 21 disaster - gone but not forgotten
- Elliott: Collegedale incorporates to avoid Sunday 'blue laws'
- Gaston: 'Marse Henry' Watterson's journalism fame began in Chattanooga
- Robbins: Orchard Knob battle recalled in 1895
- Elliott: Chattanoogans joined in an 'orgy of joy and gladness' on Armistice Day, 1918
- Thomas: Noted service, speakers are marks of Rotary Club of Chattanooga since 1914
- Summers and Robbins: Remembering noted Tennessee author North Callahan
- Raney: 'I auto cry, I auto laugh, I auto sign my autograph'
- Gaston: Sequoyah's alphabet enriched Cherokees
- Robbins: A look at Sam Divine's life during the Civil War
- Robbins: Memories of a Confederate nurse
- Robbins: More notes from Bradford Torrey's 1895 visit to Chickamauga Battlefield
- Robbins: Journalist in 1895 details visit to Chickamauga Battlefield
- Elliott: Telephone exchange firebombing was distraction for grocery store robbery
- Gaston: Worcester brought Christ's message to Cherokee at Brainerd Mission
- Robbins: 1896 travel diary: 'A Week on Walden's Ridge'
- Gaston: Elizabeth Strayhorn, WAC Commandant at Fort Oglethorpe
- Robbins: The history of the Friends of Moccasin Bend National Park
- Moore: Do you own a Sears Roebuck home?
- Summers and Robbins: Camp Nathan Bedford Forrest in World War II
- Gaston: Hiram Sanborn Chamberlain remembered
- Elliott: Daisy the center of tile, ceramic manufacturing in Hamilton County
- Gaston: FDR inaugurates the Chickamauga Dam
- Summers, Robbins: Interned WWII Germans had it easy at Camp Crossville
- Elliott: A war correspondent on Lookout Mountain
- Gaston: Chickamaugas finally bury hatchet in Tennessee Valley
- Gaston: Chickamaugas in Chattanooga
- Robbins: The history of the Riverbend festival
- Raney: Sadie Watson, the first woman elected in Hamilton County government
- Moore: Remembering Chattanooga's Hawkinsville community
- Elliott: Welsh coal miners transformed Soddy after the Civil War
- Gaston: Chattanooga's best-kept secret
- Elliott: Cabell Breckinridge loses his horse
- Raney: Martin Fleming is the people's judge
- Gaston: The amazing career of Francis Lynde
- Martin: Hamilton County's Name Sake: Alexander Hamilton
- Summers, Robbins: The crosses at Sewanee
- Bledsoe: The fiery truce at Kennesaw Mountain
- Moore: Talented architect's life cut short by tragedy
- Rydell: Chattanooga's place in soccer history
- Robbins: Tennessee Coal, member of the First Dow Jones Industrial Average
- Raney: In the barber chair
- Lanier: Becoming the Boyce Station Neighborhood Association
- McCallie: John P. Franklin: Living history among us
- Barr: Chattanooga's first railroad: The Underground Railroad
- Summers, Robbins: Charles Bartlett was a Pulitzer Prize winner, Kennedy confidant
- Rainey: 'We have seen it'
- Elliott: Feinting and fighting at Running Water Creek and Johnson's Crook
- Gaston: The Spring Frog Cabin at Audubon Acres
- Raney: Wauhatchie Pike was moonshine motorway
- Robbins: Oakmont was home of venerable Williams clan
- Summers and Robbins: Rebirth of the Mountain Goat Line
- Elliott: Bad investments led to Soddy Bank failure in 1930
- Summers and Robbins: Pearl Harbor attack left football behind
- Gaston: Jolly’s Island namesake had long ties with Sam Houston
- Return Jonathan Meigs, Indian Agent
- Moore: Did you know about St. Elmo's other two cemeteries?
- Summers: Orme - Marion County's almost lost community
- Davis: Spooky revival at Sharp Mountain in 1873
- Robbins: The story of Longholm
- Raney: Women labored to help the U.S. win World War I
- Even in the city, the 'wheel' changed everything
- Murray: Confederate dilemma after Chickamauga
- J.B. Collins — Newsman extraordinaire
- Robbins: The Story of the Lyndhurst Mansion
- Chattanooga artist and wife lost on the Lusitania
- Chattanooga History Column: Battelle, Alabama and the Battelle Institute
- John Ross, a founder of Chattanooga
- Hamilton County casualties in World War I
- Chattanooga Power Couple
- 'Somewhere in France'
- The Ray Moss family
- Battery B from Chattanooga
- Ulysses S. Grant, Clark B. Lagow, and the Chattanooga Bender
- Songbirds Museum Timeline
- Hamilton County World War 1 roster
- The Soddy Girl and the Memphis Belle
- Blues icon Bessie Smith was the Empress of Soul
- Women's Army Corps at Chickamauga
- Emma Bell Miles' life at the top of the 'W'
- The Tivoli Wurlitzer is one of Chattanooga's priceless assets
- Chattanooga in struggle for freedom during Civil War
- October 1918, Chattanooga paralyzed by Spanish flu epidemic
- Eli Lilly and the Ditch of Death
- One hundred years ago, Chattanooga goes to war
- The legacy of Anna Safley Houston
- Harriet Whiteside was ahead of her time
- Southern Adventist University
- Chattanooga native's writings aided Civil Rights movement
- Zion College, Chattanooga's only African American College
- The North Shore's hidden past
- Mayme Martin -- Businesswoman and community leader
- Thomas Sim's epic struggle for freedom
- Top of Cameron Hill was price of rerouting interstate
- Cameron Hill has rich history
- Temperance movement included Harriman university
- The sweetest music this side of Heaven
- Conquistadors at Chattanooga
- Chattanooga and the 'General'
- Chattanooga's first Thanksgiving, 1863
- Chattanooga's greatest flood caught city unaware
- Opening the Cracker Line
- European trip in 1900 enlightens Sophia Scholze Long
- Sophia Scholze Long spoke out when others were silent
- Little South Pittsburg and its big silent movie stars
- Lot attendant recalls hottest job in Chattanooga
- Chattanooga's Forest Hills is final resting place for known, unknown
- Burritt College -- Pioneer of the Cumberlands
- Chattanooga's nicknames trace city's evolution
- The 25th annual meeting of the Tennessee Press Association
- Clemons Brothers Furniture Store
- The Short Life of the USS Chattanooga
- Ellen Jarnagin McCallie lived a truly remarkable life
- Dr. Jonathan Bachman was a revered city father
- Second guessing the Confederate failure on Missionary Ridge
- Nancy Kefauver, ambassador for the arts
- William Gibbs McAdoo kept his Southern roots
- Chattanooga's Secretary of the Treasury
- Howard Baker remembered as a statesman/photographer who snapped history
- Tivoli's last picture show
- The history of one of Chattanooga's oldest businesses
- Chattanooga's roller derby skaters
- Myths of Coca-Cola in Chattanooga
- Chattanooga's neighborhood grocery stores
- The tale of the Scottsboro Boys
- The people's history of Chattanooga
- Howard School is Chattanooga's reminder of Reconstruction
- Elevator operator, painter, mystery man: meet Rice Carothers
- Raulston Schoolfield made enemies amid his rise to power
- Website lets users peer into Chattanooga's past
- The flood of 1917
- Chattanooga's 'wickedest woman' buried at Forest Hills
- History of Cummings Highway
Parden moved to St. Louis, Missouri. He practiced law until 1940. Active in politics, he was appointed city prosecutor and later assistant state's attorney.
Nevada Taylor died in 1907 of "nervous prostration" at her childhood home in Ohio.
Ed Johnson lay in an untended cemetery for nearly 100 years until Hamilton County educator LaFredrick Thirkill began refocusing public attention on Johnson's story. Johnson's conviction was overturned in 2000. "Contempt of Court" by Mark Curriden and Chattanooga attorney Leroy Phillips Jr. increased interest in Johnson's lynching.
Established in 2016, The Ed Johnson Project (www.edjohnsonproject.com) seeks to build a memorial to Johnson near the Walnut Street Bridge, produce a video about his case, and endow a scholarship in his name.
Each of Parden's constitutional arguments were eventually affirmed by the Supreme Court. As Parden stated at the conclusion of the Court's initial proceedings, "Nothing less than our civilized society is at stake."
Gay Moore is a freelance writer living in Chattanooga. For more, visit chattahistoricalassoc.org.