Trigger Warning: racial violence and archaic racial language.
On January 12, 1931, a mob of at least 2,000 seized a Black man named Raymond Gunn, tied him to the roof of Garrett schoolhouse, and burned him alive in a public lynching meant to terrorize the Black community in Maryville, Missouri located in Nodaway County.
I am not a native Missourian, but I landed in Nodaway County Missouri in 2010. I taught for several years until I moved to Maryville and started teaching Literature in 2015. It was that year that I learned of a terrible history…a dark story that I stumbled on by accident.
This is the story of Raymond Gunn. The Black man who was lynched by a massive mob in Maryville, Missouri.
I learned about the lynching while doing a search of the town with my American Literature class…I Googled “Maryville, MO.” I realized quite quickly that the town was know for a particularly heinous act committed on January 12, 1931.
The first images that came up with the story were grainy images of a school house burning. To my horror, when I looked closer, I could see the outline of a man on the roof and what looked to be a couple thousand or more onlookers. What in the world was going on and why would so many people watch a man burn to death in the Midwest (not even close to the deep south) in the 1930s?
From the Hopkins Journal, a local Nodaway County newspaper: “Velma Colter, a 20 year old school teacher, was killed on Tuesday, December 16, 1930. She taught at the Garrett School, which was about three miles from Maryville, Missouri. Raymond Gunn, a 27 year old black man was accused of the murder. On January 12, 1931, while he was being detained in Maryville, a lynch mob took him to the schoolhouse where the teacher had been killed and burned him alive on the roof of the schoolhouse.”
But, as always, there is more to the story.
Raymond Gunn was born January 11, 1904 in Maryville, Missouri. The oldest of eight children of Michael and Maymie Gunn. The Gunns were described as farmers in the 1920 census.
I couldn’t learn much about Gunn’s early life, but in 1925, Gunn was convicted of the attempted rape of a student at what is now Northwest Missouri State University after he was accused of accosting a woman on a rural road outside of Maryville. The victim claimed Gunn put his thumbs inside of her mouth during the assault. *This will be important later on in the narrative.
Gunn never confessed to the crime, and he was alleged to have been beaten while in custody. He was released on January 28, 1928.
In 1929, he married and moved away to Omaha where he quickly lost his wife to illness and returned to Maryville. While in Nodaway County, he worked as a hunter, mostly small game including rabbits.
On December 16, 1930, young teacher Velma Colter, who was the daughter of a local farmers, was killed in the one-room Garrett schoolhouse southwest of Maryville. When she didn't return home, her partially nude body was found in a pool of blood and there was a "bloody footprint” according to reports.
The community was horrified by the murder of a young woman and teacher at that.
Gunn was immediately suspected. A farmer said that he saw a Black man matching Gunn's description near the school on the day of the murder. Authorities arrested several Black men matching the description before focusing on Gunn on December 18.
When interviewed, Gunn was said to have blood on his shirt (which he claimed was rabbit blood) and the authorities said his footprint matched the one at the scene. Furthermore, reports said that Gunn had a bite mark on his thumb.
Gunn is said to have confessed, saying he had gone to the school with a hedge wood club after seeing Colter outside with a coal bucket. In his confession: Gunn said he hit her once with the club after she bit him and then again after she hit him with the coal bucket.
This is very important to understand: Many Black people were lynched under accusation of murder. During the Jim Crow era of racial terror, mere suggestions of Black-on-white violence could provoke mob violence and lynching before the judicial system could or would act. The deep racial hostility permeating society often served to focus suspicion on Black communities after a crime was discovered, whether or not there was evidence to support the suspicion, and accusations lodged against Black people were rarely subject to serious scrutiny.
*Part 2 will be delivered to your inbox tomorrow, October 11, 2023 .
Jess