Wilbur Little was a black United States veteran of World War I, lynched in April, 1919 in his hometown of Blakely, Georgia, for refusing to remove his military uniform. Servicemen who had been discharged from the army were permitted, under War Department regulations to wear their service uniforms for three months after their demobilization date. Reportedly, Little was still in uniform beyond that date. He was one of many African-American servicemen of the time who were subjected to violence for continuing to wear their uniforms after being discharged from the military. Little was killed by Blakely residents, but the details of his death are uncertain. One source says he was hanged and burned. Another states he was beaten to death. The lack of authoritative information about these types of killings was not uncommon.
Lynching
Little returned to Blakely on April 10, 1919, wearing his military uniform, and was seen at the train station by a group of white men who demanded he remove the uniform. He was threatened with arrest, but, lacking civilian clothes, was allowed to return to his home in uniform. According to historian Isabel Wilkerson: The lynching of Little was memorialized by poet Carrie Williams Clifford in "The Black Draftee from Georgia" :
After publication of the story in the Chicago Defender, a number of contemporary newspapers claimed that reports of the lynching were a hoax. Articles which ran in the Winston-Salem Journal, the Kingston Daily Freeman, the Raleigh News and Observer, and the Taylor Daily Press labeled reports of the lynching as "slanderous and absolutely baseless", attributing them to an "unreliable negro newspaper", possibly the American News of New York City or the Defender. After publication in the Defender, the lynching story was repeated in the larger New York Sun. Picking up on that story, the Savannah Morning News sent a telegram to C.M. Deal, mayor of Blakely, requesting information. The Savannah newspaper received a response from mayor Deal stating "No negro has been lynched in this county because he refused to take off his uniform. Wilbur Little, who was reported lynched, is living and working on the farm of Judge R.H. Sheffield in this county." The mayor went on to state that Cliff Hughes, a "negro soldier" had been robbed and murdered in the county, and that the white murderer had been convicted and sentence to life in prison within weeks of his crime.
A month after the article appeared in the Chicago Defender, and then appeared in other northern newspapers, the editor of a local Blakely newspaper, the Early County Times, wrote letters denying that the killing occurred and accusing the New York Sun, the Philadelphia Public Ledger, and other northern papers of slander. Editor W.W. Fleming demanded a retraction from the northern papers stating that the story “vilified” the city. "Inasmuch as the story is absolutely untrue I would thank you to secure from your correspondent his authority for publishing this slander upon our people." He also stated that Wilbur Little was very much alive, living in Blakely and working for a local jurist. Fleming's protests prompted the NAACP to send an investigator to Blakely. On June 7, 1919, the NAACP investigator, Monroe N. Work, sent a telegram to NAACP officer J.R. Shillady stating "Have investigated report. Blakely, Georgia, lynching does not appear to have." Work concluded his investigation by recommending that allegations of a lynching be dropped. The denial by the Early County Times, and the subsequent investigation by Work, led the NAACP to delay publication of the Wilbur Little story. However, the organization eventually rejected the recommendation of their investigator, publishing the story in Crisis three months later.
A different victim, a different crime
In 2015, the Early County Times published an article, again refuting accounts of the lynching, and laying out details of the events. The paper stated that two escaped white criminals had come across black uniformed serviceman Cliff Hughes in Dothan, Alabama. Hughes was working as a taxi driver, and picked the men up as customers. The escapees murdered Hughes, dropped the body in Early County, and made off with Hughes' car. The motive for the crime was theft. Early County authorities had no way to identify the body, other than the initials C.H. and C.L.H., so Hughes was initially buried as "John Doe". The localweekly newspaper promptly published a story about the crime titled "A Murder Mystery". When a report of a missing soldier and car was filed in Dothan, Alabama, the mystery was solved, and Mr. E.I. Baker of Dothan traveled to Blakely to claim the body of his brother. The two escapees were tracked down, arrested, and eventually confessed. Just 27 days after he killed black taxi driver Cliff Hughes, the white triggerman was convicted by a white Early County jury and sentenced to life imprisonment by a white judge. The Early County News states that Wilbur Little was celebrating his 22nd birthday on the day that the Chicago Defender "announced his 'death' to the world".
