Monett Lynching

Marker Text: Monett has always been known as a nice, peaceful railroad town. However, in 1894, that was disrupted. There were five lynchings in twelve years near the turn of the century in this area, however, only one of these was in Monett. On June 28, 1894 on what seemed to be a normal night in Monett, turned into a dark date in Monett history. There was a man named Hughlett Ulysses Hayden that had been accused of killing a white man because he and four other black men were tired of the treatment of blacks in this area. One pulled the trigger, but it is unknown who. One of the local newspapers named who they believed to be the shooter, but the actual killer of the white man has never been officially known. Hayden was then sought out by a mob and lynched for his murder of a white man. He was buried in an unmarked grave after his lynching. In 2021 a gravestone was purchased for his grave in the Oakdale Cemetery. The Carthage Press reported after the lynching that all the African Americans in Monett were ordered by the railroad men to get out of town.

The other 4 lynchings took place in neighboring towns through 1906.

According to local historian Murray Bishoff, “It appears that no African Americans lived in Monett after this time. According to legend, there was an ordinance on the city books restricting the movement of blacks in Monett, but no such ordinance has been found. That did not make the restriction any less real. Further scrutiny about racial attitudes in Monett occurred after the riot in Pierce City on August 19, 1901, when a mob of 1,000 whites hung one black man and shot two others to death from one of the town’s oldest African American families. Then, after a six hour riot by whites, the whole Negro population of around 200 persons were expelled from the city (See “The Lynching That Changed Southwest Missouri,” The Monett Times, August 14-16, 1991).” This 1901 incident made the news nationwide.