Brooke Hart - Thurmond and Holmes' Lynching

Thurmond and Holmes' Lynching

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Meanwhile, local newspapers reported that Holmes and Thurmond had met with psychiatrists and would attempt to plead not guilty by reason of insanity. An angry crowd gathered in St. James Park, across the street from the county jail where the two men were being held. Sheriff William Emig contacted Governor James Rolph, asking that the National Guard be deployed to protect the prisoners. Rolph refused. Upon learning of rumors of a possible insanity plea on the part of Thurmond, law enforcement authorities directed two psychiatrists from Agnews State Mental Hospital in Santa Clara, California to examine both Thurmond and Holmes to preclude such a defense. Following cursory examinations in their cells at the Santa Clara County jail in San Jose, with a mob outside in the jail courtyard, both men were declared sane.

Upon payment of $10,000 cash by the father of Jack Holmes—an astonishing sum in 1933—San Francisco attorney Vincent Hallinan agreed to represent his son. With a volatile mob increasing day and night outside the jail, on the Saturday before what turned out to be the day of the lynching, Hallinan called Rolph and asked that he call out the National Guard should an effort be made to lynch his client. Rolph retorted that he would "pardon the lynchers". Later the same day, he informed shocked reporters that he would refuse to dispatch the Guard.

After the discovery of Hart's body the next day, word went out immediately throughout northern California. All day Sunday and into the evening, radio stations issued inflammatory announcements that a lynching would occur that night in St. James Park in San Jose. By 9:00 p.m., a mob estimated by the press to range anywhere from 5,000 to 15,000 men, women, and children were jammed into the park, with an estimated 3,000 abandoned vehicles left on streets nearby. Governor Rolph was in regular telephonic communication with Raymond Cato, whom he had appointed to head the California Highway Patrol. Cato was ensconced in the home of a Rolph political ally and neighbor in the mountains west of San Jose with an open phone line to the jail. As the assault on the jail commenced about 9:00 p.m., Governor Rolph canceled a planned trip to the Western Governors' conference in Boise, Idaho to prevent his chief political rival, Lieutenant Governor Frank Merriam, from calling out the National Guard to stop the lynchings.

By midnight, November 27, thousands had gathered outside the jail, while the sheriff's deputies fired tear gas into the crowd in an attempt to disperse them. However, the crowd became angrier and larger. The nearby construction site at the post office (intended to replace the previous post office, which is now the San Jose Museum of Art) was raided for materials to make a battering ram. Emig ordered his officers to abandon the bottom two floors of the jail, where Thurmond and Holmes were being held. The mob, by this time estimated at 6,000-10,000 (other reports are of 3,000-5,000), stormed the jail, took Holmes and Thurmond across the street to St. James Park, and hanged them. Child movie star Jackie Coogan, a friend of Brooke Hart from Santa Clara University, was reported to be one of the mob that prepared and held the rope for lynching.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, on December 2, after a special meeting of the city council heard testimony in support of leaving the tree as a monument and warning to evil doers, the council approved the cutting down of the cork elm by city workers. Police were required to keep off a crowd of souvenir hunters seeking a twig or branch of the infamous "gallows tree", the bark and lower branches having been hacked and stripped for mementos.