Jake Johnson

Jake Johnson was an African American Texan accused, tried, and convicted in Harris County for the murder of local white storekeeper B. W. Loveland in 1869.1

The trial took place in April 1870, and the verdict was appealed to the Texas State Supreme Court.2

On August 5, 1870, he was executed by hanging.3

News reports about Johnson’s conviction, imprisonment, and execution mention Sandy Parker as his spiritual advisor.4 Just before Johnson’s final statement to the assembled crowd, according to the Telegraph:

The colored minister, Rev. Sandy Parker, then read a hymn, which was sung by the entire assemblage. A prayer was then offered by the colored preacher, after which the prisoner himself knelt down and prayed. The doomed murderer said farewell to the vast crowd…5

Newspaper reports said that the morning of the execution, “the freedmen began arriving at the jail, and by noon a crowd of about one thousand had collected.”6 The execution itself, said another report, was “witnessed by about 5000 persons, mostly freedman [sic]—some from the Brazos and other distant points. This was the event of the week, and one that will long be remembered by the freedmen of this city.”7

The Daily Union initially reported that Johnson was “to be hung in the jail yard—not at Hangman’s Grove, as is generally supposed.”8 But in the end, the execution did take place in Hangman's Grove.

Several reports describe the location of the gallows for the execution of as “at Hangman’s Grove, in the southwestern suburbs of the city,” where a scaffold was set up.9

  1. For coverage of the murder and case, see “The Loveland Assassination Horror,” Houston Daily Union, February 24, 1870, AHN; Robert Wuthnow, Rough Country: How Texas Became America’s Most Powerful Bible-Belt State (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016), Country,* Chapter 1.↩

  2. See Wheelock, Reports of Cases Argued and Decided…, vol. 33 (Austin: Tracy, Siemering, 1872), 570-83.↩

  3. “The Week’s Doings,” Houston Evening Telegraph, August 6, 1870, link.↩

  4. “The Loveland Murder,” Houston Evening Telegraph, August 5, 1870, link.↩

  5. “The Loveland Murder,” Houston Telegraph, August 11, 1870, link.↩

  6. “The Loveland Murder,” Houston Telegraph, August 11, 1870, link.↩

  7. “The Week’s Doings,” Houston Evening Telegraph, August 6, 1870, link. See also the Galveston Tri-Weekly News, August 10, 1870, AHN: “A large crowd followed the procession, and on arriving at the gallows it seemed as though the entire colored population of the county had turned out.”↩

  8. “Jake Johnson,” Houston Daily Union, August 2, 1870, AHN.↩

  9. See “The Execution,” Houston Telegraph, August 11, 1870, link; and also “The Loveland Murder” in same issue at link.↩