It took a lot of guts for a black man to stand up to the Klan in the uncertain days of Reconstruction. But that’s exactly what one of Lawrence County’s newly-freed slaves did in the late 1860s.
Reverend Payton Sowell (1849-1932) was a frequent writer for the Lawrence ‘Democrat.’ His editorials were almost always reminiscent of olden times and people who had passed away or moved away. Today, Reverend Sowell’s editorials are a treasure trove of information for local historians, as they preserve stories of Lawrence County’s early days that would have otherwise disappeared with the passing of Sowell’s generation.
One such story, published in the ‘Democrat’ on January 17, 1917, recalled several tales of Raash Sowell, one of the Sowell family’s former slaves, with whom Payton maintained a lifelong friendship.
When the Klan first organized in Lawrence County, which probably happened sometime in 1866, Raash had only been a free man for a brief time, and he still lived with the Sowell family on what Payton called “the old home place.”
Still, Raash was not afraid of the Klan. He frequently told anyone who would listen, “If the Klan comes to see me, I will tell them to pull that rag from their faces and show who they are.”
One night the Klan decided to pay Raash a visit. Payton, who would have been a teenager at the time, recalled the scene at his home place. He said that “their horses seemed tall as elephants…they looked weird and frightful with high hats and faces hidden behind masks.”
The men rode up to Raash’s door and called him out. Although Payton could see that Raash was clearly afraid, Raash neither ran nor hid, but stood his ground with dignity and faced the men hidden behind their masks.
What happened next was a common Klan scare tactic. One of the riders asked Raash to bring him a bucket of water. When he did, the rider drank the entire bucket at one gulp (a similar incident recorded in Pulaski at about the same time revealed that the secret to this trick was that the rider had a rubber bucket or bladder of some sort hidden beneath his robe, and the dumping of the water into that container made it seem as though he had drunk the entire thing in one gulp).
The rider ominously said, “That is the first drink of water I have had since I was killed at the Battle of Shiloh,” in an attempt to reinforce the idea that the Klan was composed of the ghosts of Confederate soldiers killed in action during the Civil War.
Payton says that before the riders disappeared into the woods, they called Raash aside and “spoke something to him in slow, solemn tones.”
Although Raash was shaken by this encounter, and never would tell anyone what they said to him, Raash did not let his fear get the best of him, and he did not let the fools hidden behind their masks win. He rarely spoke of the Klan after that encounter, but he also didn’t run or allow them to scare him off. In fact, not long afterward, Raash “set up housekeeping on the ridge not far from Crawfish Creek” and became a landlord in his own right.
Raash’s victory was a dignified, well-lived life as a free man with a good sense of humor and a kind heart. Payton wrote that Raash always “bowed his head and gave thanks over his food before eating,” and that Raash would always come to hear Payton preach when Payton’s itinerary brought him to Pleasant Grove Church, waiting until the end of the service to approach him and say, “God bless you, Patus.”
Lawrence County History Trivia 