Found another Charlie Brown of history. In 1875, Charlie Brown and his brother Derry, as well as some other individuals, were accused of rounding up fellow African Americans in order to kill the white men of Mississippi. This was at a time when race issues were playing out in some very ugly ways in Mississippi, with politics being used for racial issues but also racial violence being used to control politics. In a former Democratic stronghold, the Republicans had won thanks to the votes of freed slaves. (For those whose understanding of the parties and racial voting tendencies is more modern, remember that the Republicans were the party of Lincoln, was the slave-freeing party.) The Democrats at the time had formed the Mississippi Plan to use organized violence to suppress the black vote. At this point, I’ll I’ve found is some testimony regarding the Browns, and it looks to be regarding a group that the Browns were a part of being shot at by a group of white men. I have not yet dug into the history enough to know if there was any truth to the accusations against Charlie Brown, or if this was just an excuse invented by the white folks to legitimize shooting at these black men.

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