Unprecedented History

The story of Ed Johnson and his attorneys changed the course of justice in America forever with a series of historic precedents and legal firsts. Ed Johnson was the first African American awarded a stay of execution by the US Supreme Court. Noah Parden, a local Chattanooga attorney, was one of the first African American lawyers to appear before the US Supreme Court. For the first time, the US Supreme Court got involved in a state criminal case and halted an execution. After local Chattanoogans ignored the stay of execution and lynched Ed Johnson, the Supreme Court, the country and President Teddy Roosevelt reacted swiftly and with outrage. They investigated the lynching, and the Supreme Court held their first and only criminal trial to find a handful of the perpetrators guilty.

Unjust Death

On March 19, 1906, Ed Johnson, was mob-lynched from the second span of the Walnut Street Bridge in Chattanooga. After a trial devoid of incriminating facts and with a clearly biased jury, Johnson was sentenced to death for the rape of a white woman. When the US Supreme Court granted a stay of his execution, a mob stormed the jail. Johnson was the second man to be lynched on the bridge, after Alfred Blount was hung from the first span in 1893. Johnson and Blount were two of the approximately 4,000 African Americans who were lynched from reconstruction to the civil rights era. Johnson’s last words, spoken from the bridge before he was killed, were, “God bless you all, I am a innocent man.”

Courageous Advocacy

Noah Parden and Styles Hutchens, two African-American attorneys from Chattanooga, provided a courageous and successful defense for Ed Johnson. In spite of death threats, they proceeded with the case after the majority of Johnson’s original legal team believed an appeal of the Hamilton County court ruling would be fruitless and frivolous. After the lynching, the two men and their families fled Chattanooga for their own safety.