Other Side of Eden: Emma Coleman remembers the lynching of Shadrick Thompson in 1932
Emma Coleman remembers the attack on Mamie Baxley and the lynching of Shadrick Thompson. Uncut interview from 1996. Born in the late 19th Century, Emma Coleman was a contemporary of Mamie Baxley and worked for Jim Green's family at Morven for most of her life.
Born in 1897, Emma Coleman was in her thirties when the attack on the Baxlely's occurred. Like many in the African American community of her day, Coleman believed that Shad did not "rape" Mamie in the narrow interpretation meaning "penetration". We know from newspaper accounts of the day, that after beating Henry Baxley with a piece of stove wood, that Thompson dragged Mamie barefoot out of her bedroom across the fields to the mountain next to Edenhurst where he left her after taking her wedding ring. A few days after the attack, Mamie was examined by her uncle, a prominent gynecologist from Philadelphia, who described her as recovering in a satisfactory way.
