On September 8, 1919, two Black World War I veterans, Bowman Cook and John Morine, were lynched in Jacksonville, Florida. A White mob took the two men from the Duval County Jail and drove them to the edge of Evergreen Cemetery, where they were shot and killed. Their deaths came at a time when racial violence was spreading across the country, during what would become known as the Red Summer of 1919.
The Red Summer emerged from several tensions that had been building during and after the First World War. Hundreds of thousands of African Americans had served in the military, and many returned home determined to claim the rights and dignity they had been denied before the war.
At the same time, the Great Migration was bringing increasing numbers of African Americans into cities where they competed with White workers for jobs and housing. White supremacists responded with intimidation and violence. Between April and November 1919, racial attacks erupted in communities including Washington, D.C., Chicago, Omaha and Elaine, Arkansas that led to the deaths of hundreds.
Jacksonville was already experiencing serious racial tensions. Several Black taxi drivers had been killed by White riders, while local officials refused to properly investigate their deaths. With little protection from authorities, Black cab drivers began refusing White passengers as a means of protecting themselves.
In mid-August, a White passenger became angry after being refused service and fired a handgun indiscriminately into a crowd of African Americans. During the confrontation that followed, the man was killed. Police subsequently alleged that Bowman Cook and John Morine were responsible for his death. On August 20, the two men were arrested and placed in the Duval County Jail to await trial.
They never received one.
Three weeks later, on September 8, a large White mob went to the jail. The mob had reportedly been looking for another Black prisoner, Ed Jones, but Jones had been moved elsewhere for his protection. When the mob discovered that he was gone, they demanded Cook and Morine instead.
The two men were taken from the custody of the authorities and driven to North Main Street and Cemetery Road, near Evergreen Cemetery. There, the mob killed them. Contemporary NAACP records later listed their manner of death as “Hanged and Shot.”
The violence did not end with their deaths. Morine’s body was left in a ditch. Cook’s corpse was tied behind an automobile and dragged through Jacksonville for nearly 50 blocks before his mangled remains were dumped on Hogan Street near the Confederate monument in Hemming Park.
The treatment of Cook’s body was not incidental. Lynching was intended not only to kill its immediate victim but to terrorize everyone who witnessed it or heard about it. Publicly displaying or mutilating a victim’s body sent a warning to the wider Black community that challenging the existing racial order could have deadly consequences.
The murders of Cook and Morine were also part of the broader pattern of violence against Black veterans during the Red Summer. Their military service was significant because many Black veterans returned from the war with a stronger determination to demand equal treatment. They had worn the uniform of a country that claimed to be fighting for democracy, only to return home to a society where White mobs could remove them from jail and kill them.
And there were no consequences.
Despite the size of the mob and the fact that Cook and Morine had been forcibly removed from a county jail, no one was ever arrested or charged for their lynching. Their murders exposed the failure of law enforcement and the justice system to protect Black citizens from racial terror.
More than a century later, the story of Bowman Cook and John Morine remains part of Jacksonville’s history of racial violence. Their deaths demonstrate what the Red Summer represented. It was not simply a series of riots or isolated outbreaks of violence. It was a nationwide wave of racial terror directed at African Americans who were demanding safety, dignity and equal citizenship.
Sources:
Lynching in America / The Lynching of Bowman Cook and John Morine
https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/2019/09/07/after-100-years-2-jacksonville-lynchings-being-commemorated/3475760007/
