“Improving Social-Emotional Health: Expansion of Teacher and Student Wellbeing during the COVID-19 Crisis in Honduras.”
Journal on Education in Emergencies 8 (3): 202-214
Co-Authored with Gustavo Páyan-Luna
ABSTRACT
The Honduran education system was caught off guard when COVID-19 struck the country. With effectively no training or preparation and very few resources, educators across the country began providing distance learning classes in mid-March 2020. Overnight, educators faced significant obstacles in their quest to keep young people studying—teaching classes to students they could not see and engaging young people who lacked technology. Teachers and students began to experience social-emotional problems. This field note describes how the United States Agency for International Development’s Asegurando la Educación project transitioned in-person social and emotional learning (SEL) activities in 135 schools to provide virtual SEL support to hundreds of thousands of beneficiaries across the county. We outline the SEL interventions that contributed to the lowest national dropout rate in five years, and enrollment rates in Asegurando’s 135 schools some 5 percent higher than the national average. Finally, we believe this field note will contribute to the evidence base for how SEL can improve mental health and school retention during future crises.
INTRODUCTION
The Honduran education system was caught off guard when COVID-19 struck the country in mid-March 2020. In their quest to keep young people studying, educators across the country with effectively no training or preparation and very few resources began providing distance learning classes. Overnight, these educators had to deal with significant new obstacles, such as teaching classes to students they could not see and engaging students who lacked technology. Almost immediately, educators and students began suffering toxic levels of stress that negatively affected learning outcomes.
While the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) project Asegurando la Educación (Ensuring Education) implemented effective, in-person social and emotional learning (SEL) activities, the project had never attempted remote implementation.1 In an effort to transition the existing in-person SEL activities to distance learning formats that would meet the needs of 4,190 teachers and 84,376 students in 135 schools, the Asegurando team found cost-effective ways to provide SEL skills to hundreds of thousands of additional beneficiaries. Their efforts also contributed to the nation’s highest retention rate in years.
This article contributes to the evidence base that describes how SEL can improve retention by reducing school communities’ toxic stress during a pandemic, while also demonstrating how implementers can extend the reach of SEL models to a greater number of beneficiaries.
BACKGROUND
SEL Education as a Protective Factor
In emergency settings, SEL skills are critical tools for building resilience among children and youth. Research has demonstrated that SEL programs that promote students’ emotional health can improve their coping strategies, academic performance, and completion and graduation rates. These programs, which also benefit teachers, can improve student attendance, engagement, and motivation. The resulting improvements in faculty and student mental health can lower their stress, anxiety, and depression (INEE 2016, 10-13; INEE 2018).
In 2017, Asegurando began working in 14 schools in the Honduran cities with the highest rates of violence and crime: Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula, Choloma, Tela, and La Ceiba. By 2019, the project had expanded into 135 schools with high rates of school-based violence—gender-based violence, bullying, drug trafficking, substance abuse, self-harm, and gang recruitment and intimidation—with the goal of strengthening education’s role as a protective factor in students’ lives.
In the face of this array of violent challenges, the project established its Safe Learning Spaces program with a foundation of dedicated educators who served as key social referents for young people (López, Ferrer, and Gutiérrez 2009). Findings from Asegurando’s baseline School Safety Study (Asegurando la Educación 2018, 2019) substantiated the premise that education is a protective factor. Nearly 94 percent of the more than 11,400 students surveyed reported that they always or almost always felt safe in the presence of their teachers. Within the conceptual framework of child protection and education in emergencies, the project sought to consolidate the school as a safe space by providing physical, psychosocial, and cognitive protection; promoting a sense of hope and stability; offering access to social services; promoting conflict resolution; supporting gender equity and girls’ empowerment; and enhancing wellbeing (INEE 2016, 5).
SEL played a central role in the transformation of school campuses from loci of violence to safe learning spaces. SEL helps to provide young people with many advantages, including better general mental and physical health, constructive interpersonal relationships, improved academic performance, and reduced at-risk behavior, such as substance abuse and criminal activity (Ortiz et al. 2020, 7). When students encounter violent environments in and out of school, SEL “can help children respond to difficult and unexpected situations in a calm and emotionally regulated manner” (Yorke et al. 2021, 4). Students with greater SEL skills also enjoy lower levels of stress and perform better academically (Edel Navarro 2003; López, Ferrer, and Gutiérrez 2009; Rodriguez-Leonardo and Peralta 2020).
Asegurando’s Safe Learning Spaces Program: Prepandemic
In 2017, Asegurando gradually began improving school safety in order to boost enrollment and retention for the 84,376 students in 135 schools. The project implemented activities in the schools and cultivated in-person, professional relationships with principals, teachers, students, and parents/caregivers. Fifteen field staff members oversaw Asegurando’s Safe Learning Spaces program, a package of 14 mutually reinforcing in-person interventions aimed at mitigating violence and creating healthier education environments. By the end of the 2019 academic year, 94 percent of participating school principals reported that their schools were safer than when the project started (Asegurando la Educación 2020).
Asegurando’s SEL Response: Prepandemic
Three key SEL strategies played a central role in the 14 interventions to create safer, healthier school campuses. First, the Teacher Wellbeing program focused on self-care and psychological first aid to reduce educator stress that was negatively affecting their students’ motivation, wellbeing, and academic performance (Ramberg et al. 2020). Next, the sports-based SEL program fortified the five core competencies outlined in the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning framework: self-management, self-awareness, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decisionmaking (CASEL 2020). Finally, Staying Positive, a 16- week program based on cognitive behavioral therapy, helped vulnerable youth improve their behavioral and education outcomes, self-awareness, self-control, and decisionmaking. In fact, findings from a prepandemic study suggested that, after completing Staying Positive, 71 percent of students became more motivated toward their studies, 65 percent exhibited improved behavior, and 59 percent increased their academic performance (Asegurando 2019). Educators’ reduced tension, fewer fights, and improved interpersonal interactions contributed to the success of the program. Some 83 percent of Staying Positive students completed the school year, and 69 percent of those re-enrolled in 2020 (Asegurando la Educación 2020). Asegurando also developed the Executive Leadership Program for Principals, a program centered on principals that enabled them to experience basic SEL concepts firsthand.
COVID-19 AFFECTS STUDENT WELLBEING
In early 2020, COVID-19 began to have a negative effect on the mental health of students across the globe. Young people suffered from anxiety, frustration, depression, social isolation, and uncertainty about the future “at critical points in their emotional development” (Rodriguez-Leonardo and Peralta 2020; University of Notre Dame 2020, 6-7; United Nations 2020, 2). A study that analyzed the effects of this confinement in Italy and Spain found that 77 percent of parents reported that their children had difficulty concentrating, 39 percent demonstrated irritability and restlessness, 38 percent nervousness, and 31 percent had feelings of loneliness (United Nations 2020, 12). “The main sources of distress” for adolescents were “concerns about their family’s health, school and university closures, loss of routine and loss of social connection” (13). The University of Notre Dame (2020, 6-7) reported emotional health concerns about educators, students, and parents in Colombia very early in the pandemic.
Indeed, Honduran educators in the Asegurando schools reported an increase in child poverty, domestic and sexual abuse, emotional stress, and dropouts.2 The suspension of in-person classes almost certainly left many students feeling the loss of education as a protective factor. No longer was the foundational figure of the teacher in the classroom serving as the central stabilizing social-emotional force as it had been before the pandemic. Like most of the rest of the world, Honduran students, teachers, and families were forced to navigate uncharted territory.
ASEGURANDO SEL ACTIVITIES: PANDEMIC
For the education community in Honduras, the COVID-19 crisis presented an emergency every bit as real and threatening as school-based violence; isolation, uncertainty, domestic violence, and greater economic strain all contributed to toxic stress. Asegurando and the country’s ministry of education (MOE) launched a set of SEL activities specifically designed to reduce toxic stress and improve the learning outcomes of attendance, performance, and retention. By the summer of 2020, the project had undertaken several virtual SEL activities focused on helping children and young people stay in school, continue to learn, and advance toward graduation. Asegurando’s key SEL interventions for teachers, students, and families became the foundation on which the MOE established SEL as one of the three essential pillars in its June 2020 report, Safe Return to School in the Wake of COVID-19 National Strategy (Secretaria de Educación de Honduras 2020). Like the rest of the education system, Asegurando had to “build the plane while flying,” which led to many new lessons learned. One of the earliest lessons had to do with providing online programming. On April 6, 2020—a mere few weeks after the lockdown went into effect—Asegurando, with outreach support from USAID and the MOE, launched its Securing Your Wellbeing campaign with a Facebook Live event titled, Facing the Changes with Self-Care. Unfortunately, the live event froze up a few minutes after the session kicked off, due to the low internet bandwidth in the home of the staff member facilitating it. As a result, the team started using Facebook Premieres, which are prerecorded sessions that incorporate live chats with the audience.
Teacher Wellbeing
At the outset of COVID-19, increased responsibilities and toxic stress began taking their toll on educators in many countries, including Peru and Colombia (University of Notre Dame, Peru, 5-6; University of Notre Dame, Colombia 6-7). Teacher wellbeing was found to be essential to the healthy recovery of education communities (Chile 2020). As a result, Asegurando adapted the in-person teacher wellbeing program in Honduras to a virtual program that prioritized restorative practices (Secretaria de Educación de Honduras 2020, 22-23). It included a series of seven webinars and twelve short videos intended to empower educators to reconnect and rebuild eroded relationships, and to promote self-care and resilience in response to unhealthy levels of fear, loss, isolation, and anxiety. The team facilitated dozens of restorative discussion circles for educators, including one session for a vice minister of education and her cabinet. The successes achieved through these circles in restoring relationships and helping the education community recognize and talk about grievances sometimes came at the expense of Asegurando team members’ own wellbeing. This was particularly true for team members who facilitated a large number of the sessions and/ or were going through personal challenges themselves. The Asegurando leadership responded with corrective strategies, such as promoting self-care among staff members and training teachers to conduct the circles.
Student Wellbeing
The need to strengthen SEL among students emerged as a priority early in the pandemic in many countries. For example, a study of 205 students ages 12 to 19 from 9 states in Mexico conducted during COVID-19 shelter-in-place measures demonstrated a correlation between higher levels of social-emotional skills and lower levels of stress among middle and high school students (Rodriguez- Leonardo and Peralta 2020). In Peru, UNESCO’s Horizontes program responded by strengthening children’s SEL, giving special attention to the needs of adolescents (University of Notre Dame 2020; UNESCO 2018).
In Honduras, Asegurando adapted key SEL components of its in-person, sports-based SEL and Staying Positive programs to produce 25 short videos designed to promote youth SEL as a way to improve retention. Called Influencer 504, the program invites youth to become the “best version of themselves.”3 The MOE broadcast the videos on their official TV channels and social media platforms, which exponentially expanded the program’s reach almost overnight. The project also posted the videos on YouTube for easy access and established an Influencer 504 Ambassadors program with the MOE that identified a youth representative to promote SEL in each of the 18 departments (or states).
Naturally, many vulnerable students required additional one-on-one attention, such as those suffering from abuse, discouraged to the point of dropping out, or forced into exploitative labor. Some schools in Colombia scheduled appointments for psychological support through Facebook using Google Forms (University of Notre Dame 2020, 4). In Honduras, Asegurando adapted foundational elements of its in-person Staying Positive program into a youth and family telecounseling program operated by school counselors. An important element of the MOE’s strategy (Secretaria de Educación de Honduras 2020, 24) was the use of telecounseling via phone and WhatsApp to work with youth on the brink of dropping out and their families to find solutions to keep the students in school. Counselors made referrals for psychological or social support when appropriate, helped adapt schedules, and offered other support. Perhaps more importantly, as the project team had learned in 2019, educators’ most effective tool sometimes was listening. “When educators listen, at-risk students and families tend to respond more positively” (Asegurando la Educación 2020, 13). The telecounseling program, although it reached a smaller number of youth, proved effective in keeping vulnerable youth engaged and studying.
Younger students needed special attention. The Chilean MOE broadcast programs on Canal TV Educa Chile to help children ages two to eight confront emotions of shame, happiness, anger, and fear (Ministerio de Educación 2020). In Honduras, Asegurando incorporated Calming Corners, an SEL activity for younger children, into the MOE’s strategy and expanded the intervention into shelters when the twin hurricanes Eta and Iota struck Honduras in November 2020 (Secretaria de Educación de Honduras 2020, 22). Throughout the 2021 academic year, Asegurando continued providing support to youngsters in hurricane-affected areas.
CASTING A WIDER NET
Asegurando had the most thorough impact when the team could engage educators, students, and parents in person and on a regular basis. The concentrated efforts to implement all 14 initiatives in a school will naturally yield the greatest results. Spending hours each day consulting, offering technical advice, problem-solving, and providing individual attention is preferable to a shorter, virtual engagement.
Moreover, an eight-hour in-person workshop is likely to produce better results than a one-hour webinar.
However, switching from the delivery of in-person SEL activities to virtual platforms beginning in April 2020 offered an unprecedented advantage: access to a much larger target group. Before the pandemic, the project might reach dozens of schools in a region, or at best 135 schools across the five selected cities. After March 2020, seven TV stations across the country broadcast Asegurando’s 30-second public service announcements. Whereas the project had limited implementation in five cities across three departments before the pandemic, by late summer 2020, Asegurando was reaching 198 cities in all 18 departments. Before COVID-19, the project implemented SEL activities in 135 schools in three of the country’s departments, with a total enrollment of 85,000; by the middle of the 2021 academic year, SEL activities were reaching nearly 8,630 schools with a total enrollment of 1,112,634. While the instruction was not as impactful as in-person attention, the greater reach of Asegurando’s SEL programming was a catalyst for introducing SEL concepts to education communities that had never even heard the term or received USAID education support. Suddenly, SEL became a priority for thousands of schools and their principals, teachers, learners, and families.
The in-person Staying Positive program reached 200 participants in 2019; in contrast, the three youth and family telecounseling webinars reached 3,600 counselors from 1,451 schools, with a total enrollment of 478,100 students.
Asegurando’s in-person, sports-based SEL program, which was conducted in physical education classes that reached 6,240 students in 107 schools in three departments prior to the pandemic, evolved into the Influencer 504 program that had reached 500,000 viewers through national education TV channels and YouTube by the end of October 2021.
The Securing Your Wellbeing awareness campaign gradually expanded the circulation of SEL videos, messages, graphics, and posts to reach over six million people, including international audiences, through eighteen radio stations, seven TV stations, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube (Asegurando la Educación 2021).
RESULTS
The findings from a rapid survey of 101 principals and 382 teachers from the 135 schools participating in Asegurando, which was conducted in October 2021, suggest that SEL programming has served to reduce toxic stress, improve communication, resolve internal conflicts, and improve the retention of at-risk students. Some 91.1 percent of the principals and 92.4 percent of the teachers either agreed or strongly agreed that the Teacher Wellbeing and Restorative Circles programs had helped reduce toxic stress levels, while 90.1 percent of the principals and 92.2 percent of the teachers either agreed or strongly agreed that these interventions improved communication and helped to resolve internal conflicts in the schools. Equally important, 88.1 percent of the principals and 88.5 percent of the teachers either agreed or strongly agreed that these two SEL activities helped to reduce the school dropout rates of at-risk students.
When asked about SEL for students, 92.2 percent of the principals and 94 percent of the teachers either agreed or strongly agreed that, in most cases, the Influencer 504 SEL program helped improve the mental health of youth. In addition, 90.3 percent of the principals and 89.4 percent of the teachers agreed or strongly agreed that the program was helping to reduce the dropout rate of at-risk students, and 92.2 percent of the principals and 93.7 percent of the teachers agreed or strongly agreed that Influencer 504 promoted leadership and empowered youths to become a positive influence on their peers.
91 percent of the principals and 92.5 percent of the teachers either agreed or strongly agreed that Calming Corners helped reduce toxic stress in younger children, while 84.7 percent of the principals and 87.8 percent of the teachers either agreed or strongly agreed that the activity contributed to a reduction in the number of younger children who abandoned school (Asegurando la Educación 2021).
CONCLUSION
There is no substitute for in-person attention, long training hours, interaction with more than one student at a time, and face-to-face engagement. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the fact that Asegurando could concentrate dedicated team members inside the 135 schools to implement all or part of the package of 14 interventions that comprise the Safe Learning Spaces program ensured greater impact.
When Asegurando “went virtual” with its 10-minute Influencer 504 video on YouTube, it could not reach the same level of interaction, engagement, and oversight that the in-person sports-based SEL session had before the pandemic. However, the project’s virtual SEL programs did reach millions of teachers, students, and parents during the pandemic and almost certainly helped to keep a great number of young people studying and curbed dropout rates. Preliminary data for 2020 show that the dropout rate was much lower than predicted, about 2.3 percent nationwide, compared to 5.39 percent a year earlier; in fact, this was the lowest rate in five years (Ministry of Education 2021). If the final official figures remain consistent with the preliminary data, then the repercussions of COVID-19—travel restrictions, closed borders, a lack of jobs, etc.—were likely contributing factors. However, never before in the history of Honduras had the education ministry and program implementers, like Asegurando, invested so heavily in awareness-raising, multimedia SEL courses, and other activities that facilitated retention.
In early 2021, when countries in the region lifted travel restrictions and the Honduran economy began reopening, a large number of young people either refused to enroll in school, stopped attending, or dropped out altogether to pursue other options than during the first year of the pandemic. However, enrollment rates in Asegurando’s 135 schools remained high, 101.06 percent, compared to 95.51 percent for the rest of the country (Ministry of Education 2021).4
Interventions related to teacher and student wellbeing were, of course, not the only ones that boosted retention. Asegurando, other USAID implementing partners, the MOE, and many stakeholders mobilized resources, made donations, and found solutions to keep young people studying.
Finally, the COVID pandemic created the need for an entirely new way of reaching educators and students. Virtual capacity-building, webinars, and social media campaigns that emerged during the pandemic have demolished barriers and opened minds to alternative ways to engage beneficiaries. Many of us in the development community will never return to the old conceptualization of program design and targets. While there are advantages to focusing resources on in-person activities, which will likely remain a large part of future program designs, we will balance that approach with distance-learning activities, social media, and multimedia events that reach much larger audiences.
“White Capping of George Matlock: Oct. 28, 1891”
November 17, 2022
On Wednesday evening, October 28, 1891, the temperature in Owen Township dropped into the 30s. Eight farmers, a blacksmith, a carpenter, and a few other “quiet, peace-loving citizens”—as the Banner called them—allegedly gathered to commit extra-judicial violence against George Matlock and his family. Wilburn Fields, James A Browning, James Ballard, Marshall Hudson, Henry C Branaman, James Drinnen, David White, brothers John and Henry S. Williams, Edward Moneyhan, and William Wilson were all neighbors of George and Drusilla Matlock. Many were inextricably linked to the Matlocks through blood or marriage. Fields and Drinnen had known the Matlock clan from their native community in War Gap, Tennessee and were former drinking buddies with George. Drinnen had married into the Matlock family. Other vigilantes had known George and his former wife, Sarah E. Browning Matlock, most of their lives.[1] Jim Browning, Sarah’s younger step-brother, was just eight years old when Sarah and George married in 1868. David White and Henry S. Williams were born the following year and grew up near the Matlock farm. David’s maternal aunt was married to George Matlock’s brother. Around 1872, Sarah gave birth to Burt Matlock, and he very well may have gone to school and played with David and Henry.
But some undisclosed “crime” drove a dozen or more members of this close-knit community to administer Lynch Law, as Hoosiers called vigilante justice at the time.
Likely emboldened by sympathetic Jackson County courts, community members, and media, the White Caps donned hoods or painted their faces, and stormed George Matlock’s home located between Freetown, Clearspring, and Kurtz. The vigilantes ransacked the Matlock house and stole family possessions, including $150.50 in cash: The equivalent of about $4,900 today. The assailants beat and kicked George and Burt, who was about 19 years old. Ironically, Burt was actually Jim Browning’s nephew. The ordeal must have terrorized the other family members who likely witnessed it: Drusilla; five-year-old David; Thomas, who was but a toddler; and Dorothy Matlock, George’s 81-year-old mother and Drusilla’s grandmother.
Immediately after the attack, George rode to Brownstown and filed charges against the White Caps with Brownstown’s Justice of the Peace. Although the Kurtz and Freetown Justices of the Peace were closer in distance, George likely felt that Brownstown’s official was more objective. Afterall, Isaac Smith was Freetown’s justice, who just two months earlier had conducted the inquest of Drusilla’s dead baby and served as a witness against her in court.
Beginning the next day, Sheriff Ewing Stillwell arrested the 11 men on the charges of Riotous Conspiracy for some, and the additional charges of Larceny and Burglary for others.
While the assault was carried out largely by farmers and laborers between the ages of 21 and 41, the aftermath suggests a much wider collaboration, including older, prominent businessmen and landowners. The defense attorneys rapidly subpoenaed the vigilantes’ spouses, siblings, children, in-laws, a reverend, and a saloon owner to serve as witnesses. Six prominent businessmen and landowners posted bond or lent other support after the fact. Five of six were older, civil war veterans between the ages of 44 and 63, including William Matlock, one of George’s own brothers. One of the six was a medical doctor, another a hotel owner, another a postmaster. Two were landowners and two bankers, including justice Isaac Smith.
Indeed, George didn’t find much sympathy in Freetown. The Freetown columnist for the Banner suggested that Matlock was the criminal and the vigilantes the victims. “Several of our citizens were arrested and bound over to the next term of court. That he (George Matlock) should have any of our quiet, peace-loving citizens arrested on such a charge, was quite a surprise to all as they seem to have an abhorrence of such a way of punishing crime.”
Neither the existing court records, nor the media leave any indication of the Matlocks’ alleged “crime.” However, the fact that a jury had found Drusilla Matlock not guilty of murdering her new born child just two months earlier was motive enough for White Caps to take the law into their own hands.
The Matlocks found little sympathy in the Jackson County justice system either. Whereas Drusilla’s murder case took six months to come to trial while only calling 12 witnesses, the White Capping case was rushed to trial exactly four weeks later, calling a whopping 40 witnesses. Prosecutor William T. Branaman and defense attorney Frank Branaman were brothers. They were also first cousins of accused vigilante, Henry C. Branaman. Moreover, it is unclear how many of those 40 witnesses actually took the stand during the short, one-day trial. The next morning, the jury found all 11 defendants not guilty. Not surprisingly, none of the written testimony survived.
The Freetown columnist applauded the verdict. “After the expenditure of much time and money, [the accused] proved themselves clear of the charge, and have returned home as happy as could be expected of men who were forced to expend so much valuable time for nothing.”
However, the Matlocks’ sorrows were far from over. Likewise, the Fields, Ballards, Brownings, and others would suffer their own tragedies. Post-Bellum Jackson County, Indiana was a rugged environment. And few survived unscathed.
[1] Please note that in the September 17, 2022 article “Drunken Brawl of September 1890: Prelude to Vigilantism,” the author mistakenly cited details from George and Sarah E. Matlock divorce court records, including the accusations of abandonment and drunkenness, and two children Walter and Rachel Ann. The records refer to a different George and Sarah E Matlock living in Ewing at the time, not those of Owen Township.
“The History of White Capping in Jackson County: 1850s-1901”
October 8, 2022
Around 1837, white males in Indiana began forming secret societies to mete out frontier justice.
The vigilantes often painted their faces black or wore white hoods to conceal their identity.
These groups also sometimes wore white paper caps and became known as White Caps, regulators or vigilance committees. The vigilantes typically targeted citizens who violated the local community’s values, such as men who neglected their families or women who had children out of wedlock.
Jackson County was no stranger to vigilante justice. In the mid-19th century, groups of regulators from Lawrence, Monroe, Brown and Jackson counties dealt backwater justice — lynching, destruction of property, lashings and brutal beatings — to thieves, counterfeiters, adulterers and other criminals.
Seymour gained international notoriety in 1868 when some 200 members of the Seymour Vigilance Committee stopped a train carrying three members of the Reno Gang while in the custody of law enforcement officials en route to the Brownstown jail. The mob easily wrested the prisoners from the officials and lynched them at the site that came to be known as Hangman’s Crossing.
A few days later, the same vigilance committee intercepted a wagon carrying three more captured members of the gang and lynched them at the same spot. According to the train’s conductor, between 2,500 and 3,000 citizens turned out to watch the spectacle.
A few months later, the media credited the same committee with storming the New Albany jail and lynching four remaining Reno Gang members. Chicago, Nashville and New York newspapers compared the extra-judicial executions to that of the Ku Klux Klan in the south.
In 1887, a Jackson County audience heckled the African American performers inside the Seymour Opera House and threw old eggs at the artists outside the theater. The columnist advised the troupe to “steer clear of ‘White Caps’ and ‘Regulators.’”
In November, Seymour police arrested African American barber Chris Peters for allegedly “robbing his employer and attempting to defraud several creditors.” Eight White Cappers broke into the Seymour jail and lashed his bare back. Peters had taken 50 cents.
The local judicial system may have been in league with the “lynch law,” as it was often called. The Banner read, “Chris Peters was acquitted because he had been whipped by the White Caps for the same offense and was sufficiently punished.”
Sympathy for White Caps at the time was widespread. In May 1888, the Banner editor wrote that the White Caps were not “outlaws, cutthroats and villains” but rather “men of good moral character, who love law and order” and wished nothing more than to punish criminals when the legal system failed.
By 1889, the White Caps of Salt Creek Township included both men and women. They not only established “justice” outside the courts, but they performed charitable acts, like chopping wood and making quilts for those in need.
Vigilantism also took the form of intimidation to force farmers into compliance with local norms. Community members circulated threats of White Cap visits if Wells Matlock, brother of George Matlock, did not erect a fence around his cornfield.
White Cap victims often identified their assailants as prominent citizens. Crothersville’s own Charles Simpson and Warren Langdon may have tampered with witnesses in an attempt to derail a lawsuit in January 1890. A dozen or more vigilantes blackened their faces or wore masks, paper caps and their coats turned inside out when they dragged Andy Slate from his bed one Sunday morning at 1 a.m.
When Slate grabbed a corn cutter to defend himself, the vigilantes shot him in the left arm and the back. The mob then marched to John C. Warner’s house and “hauled” him out of bed. Four vigilantes restrained Warner while a “fifth one held a cocked revolver at Mrs. Warner’s head, threatening to shoot her if she offered any resistance” or screamed. The White Caps tied John to a tree and severely whipped him.
According to the Banner, this particular assault was not the result of infractions committed by male victims at all but was designed to intimidate their wives. Alice A. Warner had filed a slander lawsuit against Mary Simpson, wife of Charles Simpson, while Mrs. Slate was principal witness for the prosecution.
The White Capping case went to trial in early February, and Judge Collins cleared the defendants of all charges because they were “men of good character” and “good standing,” the Banner boasted. On the same day, the judge dismissed Alice Warner’s slander case against Mary Simpson.
In 1897, John Poor and his wife fell victim to White Capping in Shields. Three men with blackened faces and white paper caps beat John with brass knuckles while knocking his wife to the ground and kicking her. They dragged John outside, where two more assailants awaited to join the attack. Mrs. Poor struck one of the vigilantes with an ax handle, allowing her husband to escape into the woods.
On Saturday morning, Nov. 2, 1901, just after midnight, several White Caps visited William R. Combs near Maumee. Accused of selling “bitters” that contained a “super-abundance of bad whiskey,” the vigilantes shot up the house’s windows and doors with buckshot and threatened to torch the house if Combs didn’t come outside.
When William emerged, the mob severely beat him and threatened “worse treatment” if he failed to move away. Combs recognized three of his attackers in Kurtz a few days later.
From this environment of extra-judicial violence carried out in the shadows of backwater Jackson County at the close of the 19th century emerged the White Capping of George and Drusilla Matlock, the most complex and convoluted vigilante attack in Owen Township history.
“Infanticide on the Matlock Farm: The Last Straw”
September 24, 2022
Although written records leave no clear motive for the vigilante attack against the Matlock family in October 1891, George Matlock’s lifestyle offers some insight.
Matlock and Sarah E. Browning began co-habiting around 1870. Burt Matlock was born the following year. But the couple didn’t marry until 1878. Sarah gave birth to two more children, Walter and Rachael Ann. Matlock’s drinking led to a separation in July 1885. Sarah and the two younger children moved to Ewing, but Burt remained on the farm with his father.
About this time, the 49-year-old Matlock brought his aging mother and 23-year-old niece, Drusilla, from Tennessee to live with him. George soon became romantically involved with Drusilla, and in December 1886, Drusilla bore him a son, Dink. The following year, Sarah divorced George, citing abandonment and excessive drinking. Three years later, Drusilla gave birth to George’s next son, Thomas. Almost immediately, Drusilla became pregnant again.
George’s drinking problem continued. In September 1890, he rode his horse to Ewing, became intoxicated and engaged in a drunken brawl with James Drinnen and Wilburn Fields. In January 1891, a jury found Matlock not guilty of attacking Drinnen with a knife. But Matlock’s problems were just beginning.
On Sunday morning, Feb. 22, 1891, Drusilla Matlock woke up, made breakfast and walked 100 yards to the barn to milk the cows. Near the apple house, Drusilla gave birth. She claimed the child was stillborn, but Dr. Edward T. Tinch testified otherwise.
“She said she had the child to drop from her,” Tinch claimed, “while standing near the apple house.”
He testified that Drusilla admitted to carrying the newborn by the neck about 100 yards and deposited it near a cornfield. And then inexplicably, she carried it back. The doctor also testified the infant was well-developed but had discolored skin, a smashed skull and bore finger marks on the neck. Its contracted muscles were not consistent with that of a stillborn child.
Neighbor David Kyte also testified he saw finger marks on the neck. Isaac Smith conducted the inquest and confirmed the child’s skull was slightly crushed and reported a spot in the mud the size of the infant’s head as if formed by pressure. Prosecutor William T. Branaman argued Drusilla grasped the “child’s neck with her hands” and strangled it.
Interestingly, George Matlock disavowed himself of Drusilla, her actions and his intimate relationship with her. He claimed since Drusilla moved in, “she had three children at my house.” This last time, “I thought she was pregnant … Her looks indicated it…” but he wasn’t certain until he came home that evening and “found … (the) child was dead.”
Twenty-one-year-old Burt reported they raked back some leaves and “found a child in the hog lot … The child was dead.”
However, considerable evidence suggests George was indeed Dink and Thomas’ father. Twice in the next few years, George and Drusilla would face fornication charges in a Jackson County court. George likely downplayed the consanguineous relationship to avoid additional legal problems and additional conflict with his neighbors.
When the jury found Drusilla not guilty in August 1891, this was likely the last straw for several of Matlock’s neighbors. Many must have felt Drusilla had gotten away with murder.
In January, the courts had failed to provide the justice that Fields and Drinnen expected in the drunken brawl case. George had abandoned one family, his drinking was out of control and now, uncle and niece were free to continue their illegitimate relationship. So Matlock’s neighbors decided to do what many other rural Jackson County communities were doing at the time: Take the law into their own hands.
“Drunken Brawl of September 1890: Prelude to vigilantism”
September 17, 2022
On Friday, Sept. 26, 1890, 32-year-old farmer James Drinnen and 42-year-old blacksmith and farmer Wilburn Fields set out from Kurtz for Ewing in a horse-drawn wagon.
The two friends had both migrated from the region of Hancock and Hawkins counties in Tennessee to Jackson County, Indiana, a few years earlier.
Upon arriving at Ewing on that warm September day, the two men likely had a few drinks at one or both of Ewing’s saloons. William Crabb ran a saloon on Grant Street, and Michael Mullen’s tavern sat on Broadway Street. The saloons were within a 2-minute walking distance of one another.
In Ewing, Drinnen and Fields met up with another acquaintance and Tennessee migrant, 54-year-old farmer George Matlock, who also was born and raised in War Gap. Drinnen, Fields and Matlock all lived near Kurtz but knew each other from Tennessee. The Matlocks and Fields had grown up together in War Gap, and Drinnen had married Rachel Martin-Matlock, George’s niece, before moving to Jackson County sometime in the mid-1880s.
The three eastern Tennessee natives left Ewing for Owen Township together. According to Drinnen, Matlock was “driving too fast and … was drunk.” Matlock dismounted his horse, “and I put him in the wagon,” Drinnen said. “I first rode the horse, and Fields got in his wagon.”
Apparently, Matlock didn’t like the fact that Drinnen was riding his horse. So “directly Fields and I changed (places),” Drinnen said, when they reached the Ewing covered bridge. By the time the three men reached Owen Township, a scuffle ensued.
Matlock reportedly tried to snatch the reigns away from Drinnen. “He jerked a large knife on me,” Drinnen said. “It was my own knife. I had loaned it to him.” The men spilled out of the wagon, and Matlock allegedly “cut at me and backed me up in a fence corner,” Drinnen said.
The blacksmith supported Drinnen’s story, saying Matlock “jumped out after Drinnen and cut at him. He drove Drinnen against a fence,” intending to kill him. Fields reported he knocked the weapon out of Matlock’s hand. Then Drinnen and Fields proceeded to beat Matlock. At some point, John Elkins, Jacob Weaver, Edward Allman and William Matlock — George’s younger brother and Drinnen’s father-in-law — arrived in time to witness the brawl.
Matlock was later arrested for intoxication and drawing a weapon. He pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of intoxication but demanded a jury trial on the weapon charge.
At the trial, Drinnen and Fields’ stories did not match testimonies of the defendant and four other witnesses. These witnesses insisted Matlock did not have the knife on that day. Ultimately, the jury found Matlock not guilty.
For their roles in the brawl, the prosecution charged James Drinnen and Wilburn Fields with assault and battery. Drinnen pleaded guilty and paid a fine of $5, but Fields fought the intoxication, assault and battery charges. When the court found Fields guilty on both counts, James A. Browning posted Fields’ bail.
Browning’s action may have hinged on his hatred for Matlock, his ex-brother-in-law. In 1878, George married Browning’s sister, Sarah E. Browning. After seven years and giving birth to two children — Walter and Rachael Ann — Sarah declared Matlock abandoned her and the kids. This separation coincided with the burgeoning romance between George and his niece, Drusilla Matlock, who was 26 years his junior.
Shortly after 24-year-old Drusilla give birth to her and George’s first child, David “Dinky,” in December 1886, Sarah sued for divorce. She claimed George was a “habitual drunkard” and “failed and refused to make reasonable provisions for his family.”
The fact that Matlock was cleared of the weapon charge while Drinnen and Fields were found guilty of assault and battery could not have sat well with Drinnen, Fields or Browning. In fact, this was just the first in a series of events that would spill over into a white-hooded vigilante attack in October 1891, where these three men would exact their revenge.
“History of Kurtz: The Prather-England Scandal of 1899”
August 13, 2022
On June 19, 1898, 20-year-old William Prather married 16-year-old Lillie England, who was likely already two months pregnant.
Both Kurtz residents were children of prominent Owen Township families. Less than a year later, the families would endure a very messy and complicated divorce that became a public scandal and drove citizens to the courthouse just to view the spectacle.
Almost immediately after the wedding, the relationship turned sour. In early September, Will opened a saloon in Kurtz and soon brought Frank Lane on as a partner. According to court records, on Tuesday, Sept. 20, 1898, just three months after the marriage, Will told Lillie “in the presence of others that he made a mistake in marrying her, that he did not love her and could never be happy with her.”
Lillie claimed that six days later, Will left her sick in bed in order to take a “certain young lady” to the Seymour Street Fair. He boasted that he planned to marry the young lady as soon as he could arrange a divorce. Upon returning home late that night, Will taunted his teenage wife that he had enjoyed a “good time” with “his girl.” According to Lillie, Will threatened to “kill himself to get out” of the marriage. “He told me that if I didn’t destroy the child, he would…”
On one occasion, Lillie locked herself in a room during an argument, and Will allegedly pulled “his revolver on me,” she said, “but I unlocked the door and left the room.” Will threatened to kill her if she told anyone. On another occasion, “he tried… to get me to kill myself,” Lillie stated. “Said if I would, he would kill himself” immediately after.
Lillie also complained about mistreatment at the hands of Will’s parents, Alexander and Julia Ann Prather. “His mother told me repeatedly that I would be the cause of his death… She said she had seen him take medicine several times to kill himself, and if I stayed, he would kill himself someday sure…,” Lillie reported.
According to court records, on Dec. 10, Will allegedly cursed and abused Lillie “and drew his revolver on her,” threatening to kill her. On Dec. 31, Will deserted her while confined to her sickbed for 15 days straight, knowing she was due to give birth any day. And when she asked what would become of her and the infant, he replied, “I don’t give a damn what becomes of you. I don’t care if you starve to death. You will never see me anymore.” Lillie said, “The morning he left, he told me to sue for divorce and he (would) pay for half of it…”
On Jan. 16, 1899, Lillie gave birth to a baby girl, Lena Prather. But the marriage was not salvageable. Will’s drinking had become an open problem. He faced charges for public intoxication in February.
On Feb. 8, Lillie filed a lawsuit against Will’s parents for seduction and sought damages in the amount of $2,500. Seduction was a sex crime typically charging a man with the coercion of a woman — usually an underage woman or child — into intercourse through the promise of marriage, money or other enticement and often resulting in his abandonment of the woman when pregnant.
Lillie alleged that Will’s parents were complicit in their son’s coercion and abandonment. Almost simultaneously, Lillie sued Will for fraudulent marriage. But Will’s troubles were only beginning.
In April, Will traveled to Bloomington to attend a funeral of his cousin, Albert Brown, who was killed in a traffic accident. By May, the divorce had become a public spectacle. The teenage daughter of a Civil War veteran was accusing her saloon-keeper husband of physical and verbal abuse, death threats with a revolver, coercion to force her to commit suicide while pregnant, philandering with other women and abandonment while sick in bed two weeks before delivering their child.
The additional allegations of the parents’ complicity in a sex crime drove spectators to the courthouse to witness the show. The Kurtz columnist for The Banner wrote, “Quite a number of people were at Brownstown the first week on the Prather and England case.”
To make matters worse for both families, Will and Lillie’s newborn daughter died the same week. Perhaps as a window into the community’s mindset, the Kurtz columnist for The Banner was silent on Will’s paternity. “Lena, the little daughter of Lillian Prather, departed from this life last Wednesday night at 11 o’clock.”
The court dismissed both of Lillie’s cases for seduction against the parents and fraudulent marriage against Will. Then on Aug. 24, 1899, Lillie sued Will for divorce on grounds of “cruel and inhuman treatment” and demanded alimony of $500, the complete value of his saloon.
Will Prather’s partner, Frank Lane, may have sympathized with Lillie. The teen’s written statement to her attorney read, “My last witness… is Frank Lane. Will tried to hire him to insult me and… said if he would, it would clear him in this case… He (Frank) knows more than anyone about the way Prather has talked about and treated me…” The divorce was granted in December 1899. Lillie returned home to live with her parents and eventually remarried. But Will’s saloon-keeper days were over. He went to Linton for work for a while but eventually returned to Kurtz to become the town’s barber. Records indicate he never officially married, but over time, Zora Fleetwood became his common law wife.