Fatal Affray: Murder at the Courthouse

#52ancestors Week 42—Conflict

 Fatal Affray: Murder at the Courthouse 

By Myra Vanderpool Gormley © 2018 

While not as well-known as the showdown at the OK Corral, a famous fight that took place 26 October 1881 in Tombstone, Arizona, an Arkansas conflict had all of the same elements, plus more. Two antagonists faced each other — one armed with a large hickory walking cane and a double-action Smith & Weston .44-caliber 6-shooting pistol and the other with a pocketknife. When it was over Judge James D. Coates was dead and the ex-sheriff of Desha County, Arkansas, Isaac Bankston, lay dying with three stabs wounds — on a street in Arkansas City, Arkansas not far from the courthouse in early June of 1884. 

Desha County (Arkansas) Courthouse; which is on the National Register of Historic Places in the United States of America.

Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

The story behind the conflict began when Bankston went up the Mississippi River about 200 miles from Desha County, Arkansas to Memphis, Tennessee in late December of 1883 and married Missouri Bradford. This created two legal problems. Isaac, a white man, was already married with two children, and Missouri was a “woman of color” according to newspaper accounts. Apparently Bankston was guilty of bigamy and of breaking Tennessee’s anti-miscegenation law, which reads: 

The Constitution of Tennessee, Article 11, Section 13, reads, "The inter-marriage of white persons with negroes [sic], mulattoes or persons of mixed blood, descended from a negro [sic] to the third generation inclusive or their living together as man and wife in this state is prohibited."  

See: Article on Race, Marriage and Law  

Isaac Bankston, the son of Ignatius Bankston (ca 1801-1862) and Rosey Ward (ca 1810-1850), was born about 1832 in either Chicot County, Arkansas Territory or Bolivar County, Mississippi. He was the sheriff of Desha County, Arkansas from 1876-1884. He had married first Martha Elizabeth White in 1858 in Washington County, Mississippi. They had two children (according to the 1880 federal enumeration of Desha County) -- Isaac Jr., born in 1872, and Laura, a daughter, born ca 1874. He married secondly Missouri Bradford in Memphis, Shelby County, Tennessee, 28 December 1883. They were married by the Rev. J. E. Roberts, an A.M.E. (African Methodist Episcopal church) minister. 

When news about Bankston’s marriage to Bradford broke, it was published in a number of Arkansas newspapers. At first Bankston denied it and threatened to sue the newspapers for libel. However, in a newspaper story that appeared in Arkansas Gazette on 12 Feb. 1884, the Rev. Roberts said he had married the couple and that Isaac Bankston and Missouri Bradford were boarding at the same place (as he and his wife were) and, "I thought he was a colored man. He has a dark complexion."  The minister also mentioned that he has talked to Missouri Bradford and she had a little boy and that she had been living with Bankston for three years. 

The calendar for the criminal court of Judge James M. Greer in Memphis, Shelby County, Tennessee was published in the Memphis Daily Appeal on 23 May 1884. Among the cases for petit larceny, assault to murder, and retailing liquor on Sunday, was a charge against Isaac Bankston and Missouri Bradford, (for) intermarrying with a colored woman. Bankston had been arrested on 5 May. 

Isaac Bankston was indicted for miscegenation (not bigamy) by marrying Bradford, but was acquitted because no evidence was produced against him, and he claimed he had a mixture of Indian blood, which apparently allowed him to legally skirt Tennessee’s anti-miscegenation law. However, in a courtroom drama, under instructions of presiding Judge Greer, the jury returned a verdict of “not guilty” without retiring from their seats and the costs of the case were charged up against James D. Coates, also of Desha County, Arkansas, who was prosecuting the case and who had acted as both a witness and special prosecutor. In an article in The Weekly Democrat-Times (Greenville, Washington County, Mississippi), published 7 June 1884, it also was shown that the prosecution was malicious.

 In a wrap-up story about the Bankston-Coates Tragedy, as it was labeled in the Memphis Daily Appeal on Friday, June 13, 1884, the report of the coroner’s jury in Arkansas City, Arkansas, said that “after said acquittal, Gen. G. P. M. Turner, the attorney general of Shelby County, Tennessee, encouraged Bankston to commit violence on J. D. Coates by making the remark to wit: ‘Bankston, if you don’t go down to Arkansas City and cowhide Coates you are not the man I take you to be.’ "

Bankston then returned to Arkansas City via steamer on 2 June 1884. He came unarmed, but shortly after arrival procured a pistol and a heavy walking stick. He called out James D. Coates, the lawyer who took part in the indictment against him. A fight ensued and Bankston hit Coates with his cane two or more times and Coates rushed at Bankston with a knife in his hand and stabbed him a couple of times, and then they broke loose. Bankston then shot Coates with his pistol, and yet another scuffle ensued at which time Coates gave Bankston a third stab in the back. Coates died first and Bankston soon thereafter.

 For Arkansas City, the county seat of Desha County, with a population of only 500 or so in 1880, this duel to the death must have been a subject of discussion for years as no doubt it would have touched the lives of many of the residents. For genealogists and historians this story presents several challenges on many fronts — about ethnicity, family history, laws, the legal process, and weighing evidence of various sources. It raises numerous questions and provides several additional mysteries to explore. And one is left wondering “what happened next?”