Howard Wilpitz

Case summary

Incident

On the morning of February 21, 1942, Howard Wilpitz was celebrating with friends in the business district of Brookshire, Texas, as he was soon to be inducted into the military. Later that afternoon, Edward H. Wilpitz, owner of Wilpitz’s Meat Market, who may have been Howard Wilpitz’s white cousin, called over Fred “Fritz” August Ebel, town constable, to inform him that he had kicked Howard Wilpitz out of his store for “using abusive language and because he was intoxicated.”

Ebel located Howard Wilpitz at J.W. Avery’s, a nearby store, and claimed he heard him using “profane” language. Ebel told Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents he then attempted to place Wilpitz under arrest. When Wilpitz resisted, Ebel struck him over the left ear with his revolver. Wilpitz then broke away from Ebel and walked across Pattison Road. Ebel claimed he saw Wilpitz reach “towards his right side several times as though he were reaching for a gun in his belt.”

Ebel enlisted the help of Hope Cooper, a night watchman and deputy sheriff of Waller County, to search Wilpitz. According to Ebel, Wilpitz said “You can’t search me,” as he backed away. Freeman Oliver, who had also been drinking with Wilpitz earlier in the day, witnessed Wilpitz “half walking and half running” on Pattison Road with his hand raised as Ebel chased him. Clarence Glover, who was on the front porch of his mother’s house, also saw Wilpitz on the road moving with his hands up. Both Oliver and Glover corroborated Ebel’s statement that he told Wilpitz, “If you don’t stop, I’m going to leg you.” Ebel, who was about 40 or 50 yards away according to one witness, then shot at Wilpitz two or three times, hitting him in the legs. Witnesses saw Wilpitz pull out a gun as he fell to the ground and fired two to three times at Ebel, knocking Ebel’s gun out of his hands. Ebel told FBI agents that Wilpitz then shot at Cooper, missing him. In return, Cooper hit at Wilpitz with a “wagon spoke” from five or ten feet away, before both Cooper and Ebel fled closer to town.

Witnesses saw Wilpitz walking north towards the Negro Odd Fellows Hall. Georgia Glover, Clarence’s mother, lived next door to the Hall and saw Wilpitz limping to a small privy behind the building.

In the meantime, Ebel and Cooper recruited other white men for assistance and followed Wilpitz to the Hall. Witnesses identified Arthur Wilson, Elgin Martin, and another white man at the scene. According to witnesses, Wilson and the unidentified man were both carrying guns. Ebel shouted at Wilpitz to exit and then fired one or two shots at the privy. Some witnesses said they saw Wilpitz’s body fall out of the privy and onto the ground, while Ebel and Wilson told FBI investigators that Wilpitz exited the privy with the gun in his hands. Ebel then stated he shot at Wilpitz twice. Ebel said that Wilson fired at least once, after which Wilpitz fell dead to the ground. Clarence Glover walked toward Wilpitz’s body along with several other witnesses. Ebel then told the group: “All you n—s stay back.”

Aftermath

Justice of the Peace E.A. Cooper held an inquest at the Hall about 10 minutes after the shooting. Although the records contain no details about the inquest, Cooper found that Wilpitz “had been justifiably killed while resisting arrest.” After about an hour, Avie O. Muske, the white undertaker in Brookshire, arrived at the scene to remove Wilpitz’s body. Muske, along with his Black helper Jesse Brantley, determined that one bullet “had entered the head back of the left ear and came out of the right side of the jaw, which bullet apparently killed Wilpitz.” They also noted two bullet wounds in Wilpitz’s legs and one through his left hand.

That same night, two white women traveled to Katy and informed Olivia Jacob, Wilpitz’s 27-year old common-law wife, of his death.

Several Black newspapers, including the Jackson Advocate, New Journal and Guide, and Atlanta Daily World, reported that Wilpitz was buried in secret, without a funeral. Muske told FBI agents he sent Brantley to Pattison to notify Wilpitz’s sister of his death. Muske claimed that someone claiming to be Wilpitz’s half brother came to the funeral home about two hours after the incident and asked that the body be embalmed and dressed in a new suit. Muske claimed no one came to retrieve the body for several days, but according to reports in the Black press no one was allowed to see the body, including M.J. Larkin, Wilpitz’s half-brother. Wilpitz was buried in Brookshire on February 25.

W.C. McClain, Waller County district attorney, presented the circumstances of the shooting to a grand jury in Hempstead, Texas around March 18. McClain later stated to FBI agents that he believed the killing of Wilpitz was “justified,” and that he had recommended the grand jury return a “no true” bill and would continue to do so. By April, the grand jury had not taken any action, and it is unknown what, if any, it ever took.

On March 10, 1942, an anonymous person wrote to President Franklin D. Roosevelt about Wilpitz’s killing and appealed for an investigation. The letter preceded the first news reports on the incident and included details recounted in the press.

On March 21, 1942, Wendell Berge, assistant attorney general of the Department of Justice (DOJ)’s Criminal Division, directed FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to investigate the incident, and cited an Amsterdam News-Star article detailing Wilpitz’s killing. Berg wrote, “Unless there was a justifiable arrest which the victim was escaping from, it appears clear that there has been a conspiracy to violate Section 52, Title 18, United States Code, in that town inhabitants conspired with a state officer to deprive the victim of his life without due process of law.” Berge urged Hoover to expedite the investigation out of concern that news of the incident would be used for wartime propaganda purposes by the Axis powers.

The DOJ instructed the FBI to begin by interviewing Carter Wesley, editor of The Informer, a Black newspaper in Houston that had published the first article about Wilpitz’s killing on March 14, 1942. He sent Hobart O. Thomas, a white-passing reporter, to conduct an investigation. Thomas told FBI investigators that some witnesses he interviewed, who corroborated details of the event, were afraid to lose their jobs for speaking about the incident.

News reports from Black newspapers claimed Wilpitz was lynched by a mob of about 25 or 30 white men. Articles in several papers alleged that locals suppressed news of the killing for 16 days, intimidating Black witnesses and forcing them to sign statements claiming they had not seen anything. FBI agents who interviewed Black residents reported that they denied being threatened to stay quiet, but stated, “they just did not like to talk about such things where white folks were involved because they feared that it might get them into trouble with the white folks.” The FBI determined that the white newspapers in Houston had not reported on the incident.

The FBI sent a report of its investigation to the DOJ on April 6. In an April 22 memo to Hoover, Berge wrote that the DOJ’s Criminal Division had determined that the facts of the case did not show a violation of federal criminal statutes and no further investigations were needed.

Organizations, such as the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching (ASWPL) and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), listed Wilpitz’s name in lynching reports and investigated the matter. Wilpitz’s name appeared in the Congressional Record of October 17, 1942 associated with an anti-lynching bill. By early 1943, Thurgood Marshall noted that he believed the incident did not qualify as a lynching, rather a possible “posse killing,” after reviewing DOJ documents.

Ebel died on April 24, 1952 in Brookshire. Wilson died in July 1962 in La Grange, Texas. Hope Cooper died on March 21, 1970 in Brookshire.

Media Gallery

Case summaries are compiled using government records and archival primary source material. These include, but are not limited to, investigative records, arrest reports, newspaper articles, court filings, census records, birth and death certificates, transcripts, and press releases. In many cases, the records contain contradictory assertions.

In addition to the incident files associated with this case, this summary relied on the following:

Sources

1920 Census

1930 Census

1940 Census

1950 Census

World War II Draft Registration Card, 1940

Texas Marriage Record, 1930

Texas Death Certificate, 1942

Organizational files from the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching Correspondence files from the  the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching

Papers of the NAACP: The Anti-Lynching Campaign, 1912-1955

Papers of the NAACP: Discrimination in the U.S. Armed Forces, 1981-1955

“Hold Secret Burial for Mob Victim,” The Atlanta Daily World, March 11, 1942

“Reveal Texas Lynching Carried Out in Secret,” The Call, March 13, 1942

“Lynching Near Houston, Texas, Exposed After Month’s Silence,” Cleveland Call and Post, March 14, 1942

“Texans Silence Town After Lynching Orgy,” New York Amsterdam Star-News, March 14, 1942

“Texas Mob Lynches Man,” Afro-American, March 14, 1942

“Secret Texas Lynching is Second in Year 1942,” The Chicago Defender, March 21, 1942