George Marshall Clark (1838 — 1861) was an African American barber in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. On September 6, 1861, Clark was forcibly taken from the city jail in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, questioned, and lynched by a crowd of fifty to seventy-five Irishmen. Marshall Clark, along with another fellow African American named James P. Shelton, had exchanged insults and blows with two Irishmen who accused them of bothering two white women on the street, and Shelton ended up fatally stabbing Irishman Darby Carney. Clark was eventually hanged from a pile driver later that night.
Background
In Milwaukee, the Irish-American community, mostly relegated to the Historic Third Ward, was a mainly working-class community that frequently was thrown into competition with working-class African-Americans in the city. Irish-Americans, though mainly blue-collar workers, often sided with the Democratic Party in the Northern United States, despite being dominated by the planter class. The two groups saw a common cause in a white supremacist politic that opposed the abolitionist and Republican press that was treated with vitriol in Democratic circles in the city. Republicans themselves also carried a "disdain for Irish Catholic culture" amid their fight for African-Americans, which only heightened the hostility among Irish Democrats against African-Americans.
At the time of the Civil War, lynching was not as prominent as it would become during Reconstruction and the Nadir. The Irish-American community in the city would not act purely on American traditions of violence, but Irish traditions of communal violence. Collective and illegal violence, including murder against African-Americans, was viewed as a "legitimate strategy" to maintain inequality and "subordinating African-Americans."
Additionally, emotions ran high on the particular day of the lynching, as it was two days before the first anniversary of the sinking of the Lady Elgin, wherein numerous Irish-American community leaders from the city had died. Many of those leaders were members of the Milwaukee Guards, an Irish militia who opposed abolitionism and upheld the Fugitive Slave Act despite the state government, the recent memory only inflamed political tension.
Lynching
While specific accounts of Marshall Clarke's interaction with a group of Irishmen in September 1861 differ, it was widely acknowledged that the central conflict arose when the Irishmen interrupted Marshall Clarke and his friend James Shelton's discussion with white women on the street. Accounts stated that the issue pertained around "the African Americans' assertion of their right to freely mix in Milwaukee's polyglot public space."
The conflict quickly degenerated into a violent skirmish as Clarke and Shelton were defending their rights to act freely. Amidst the altercation, James Shelton ended up fatally stabbing one of the Irishmen, Darby Carney. Following the conflict and Carney's murder, both Clarke and Shelton were put in jail, but Irish Milwaukeeans considered it was not enough.
On September 6, 1861, a mob of Irishmen stormed the Milwaukee city jail to exact their revenge. The mob gathered quickly after Carney's passing with the ringing of Third Wards alarm near the fire engine house their cue to gather. As quickly as the mob gathered chief of the Milwaukee police William Beck received word of the coming mob. Upon Beck's arrival, the Jailer asked whether he should open fire on the mob with his revolver if the mob broke into the jail. Beck responded that the mob would not come in "except over his body." Beck with two other officers told the mob they could not enter the jail resulting in the Irish striking Beck in the head and beat the other two officers with him until depositing them in a nearby gutter. Once inside the Jail the mob began to look for both Clarke and Shelton. While James Shelton was able to escape amidst the chaos, Marshall Clarke was taken by the mob, beaten, and dragged to the Third Ward's fire engine house. At the fire station, Clarke was subjected to an informal trial and questioned by members of the mob. Following the questioning, members of the Irish mob brutally hanged Clarke from a pile driver, and "thousands reportedly flocked to the scene of the lynching. As the crowd dispersed Clarke's body was taken down by policemen who arrived on the scene and taken into the station house.