The Second Battle of Lexington: A girl’s death and a WWI vet
Editor’s Note: As Lexington celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, the Herald-Leader and kentucky.com each day throughout 2025 will share interesting facts about our hometown. Compiled by Liz Carey, all are notable moments in the city’s history - some funny, some sad, others heartbreaking or celebratory, and some just downright strange.
March 11, 1920: Will Lockett, accused of killing 10-year-old Geneva Hardman, is executed.
In 1920, the discovery of a cap and school bag near a fence in southern Fayette County led to the arrest and execution of a Black World War I veteran, and an event called “The Second Battle of Lexington.”
It was a cold, gray morning on Feb. 4, 1920, when farmer Speed Collins found the cap and school bag. Thinking a student had lost them, he took them to a nearby school where the teacher recognized them as belonging to 10-year-old Geneva Hardman.
After the teacher dispatched students to Hardman’s home, the farm and other men went to look for the little girl.
When they arrived at the fence, the men noticed tracks in the field just beyond it. Two sets of tracks, in fact - a small set they believed to be made by a child and a larger set they attributed to a man.
The tracks led to a body hidden in the grass, the body of Geneva Hardman.
As police were called to the scene, word spread about Hardman’s murder. Throughout the county, groups of vigilantes, hellbent on finding her murderer, sprung up to search for a culprit. Police raced to find a suspect, hoping to save them from the mobs.
Their investigation led them to a young Black man named Will Lockett, a veteran and day laborer. When police found Lockett, he ran. Police took this as an admission of guilt.
According to Lexington Assistant Police Chief Ernest Thompson and Detective Dudley Veal, the two white officers who questioned him, Lockett confessed to the crime. They said Lockett admitted wanting to rape the girl, but when that failed, he killed her with a nearby rock.
Confession in hand, Lockett was indicted and transferred to the state reformatory over concerns for his safety. In response, a mob descended on the Fayette County jail demanding Lockett be released to them so they could dispense their own justice.
Kentucky had a history with lynchings. By the time Lockett was arrested, the state had recorded more than 200 lynchings, according to historian Walter White. In fact, 10 Black soldiers, apprehended while wearing their uniforms, were lynched in Kentucky just the year before.
Fearing a return to the lynching, Gov. Edwin Murrow, sent National Guard troops to Lexington to “preserve the rule of law.”
Just days after his arrest, Locket was on trial. Newsreel cameras captured the crowd outside the courthouse. Despite pleas from Hardman’s family to not riot, the crowd grew increasingly vocal.
Their chants could be heard inside the courtroom as Lockett’s jury was seated. During the trial, Lockett never took the stand. In fact, he only mumbled responses that had to be interpreted for the judge.
His attorney, Col. Samuel Wilson, only presented one piece of evidence in Lockett’s defense, his military conduct.
Lockett was found guilty and sentenced to death in just 35 minutes, author and historian Joseph Anthony said.
“The crowd outside the courthouse had one thing in common with the judge, jury and lawyers: Everyone was certain of Lockett’s guilt,” Anthony wrote in a Herald-Leader article in 2014.
“He had confessed, after all. No one cared that the confession came without counsel. Miranda rights were 40 years away. No one thought that the accused could have been confused and frightened into a confession.”
When the verdict was announced the crowd surged. National Guard troops opened fire to keep order. Mostly the troops fired over the heads of the people gathered there, but some seemingly fired directly into the crowd.
Six men were killed, dozens of others were injured.
Lockett, guarded by some 400 men, was taken to Eddyville State Penitentiary to await his execution. To gain control over the city again, U.S. Army soldiers were sent to Lexington, under the command of Brigadier General Francis Marshall, who declared martial law and secured the area with tanks, snipers and machine guns.
Marshall forced the mob to leave and put military guards in various parts of the city.
While in Eddyville, prison officials said Lockett supposedly confessed to four other murders in Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky. Despite being previously described as incoherent and confused, Lockett allegedly wrote long, eloquent letters professing his remorse.
“I am ready to die now anytime the court wants me to, whether it be in a week or thirty days .... I am sorry I did it,” Lockett wrote, according to a letter released by John Chilton, the prison’s warden.
“I am spending all my time praying and reading the Bible and I know I will be prepared to go when the time comes for me to die. I hope I will be forgiven.”
Anthony questions not only the letters of confession, but whether Lockett was ever guilty at all. Other evidence in the case seems to point to his innocence.
While Lockett’s uniform was dirty, he had no blood on his clothes. There was no physical evidence placing him at the scene. There were no witnesses who saw Lockett with Geneva, and there was no evidence she’d been sexually assaulted.
It even appeared the little girl had walked across the field with her attacker without a struggle. Would a 10-year-old white girl walk off the road with a Black man in the 1920s, Anthony asked?
On March 11, 30 days after his sentencing, Lockett died in the electric chair. Gov. Murrow said at the time his actions protected Lockett from being lynched.
In Anthony’s opinion, Lockett was lynched, just not by the mob in front of the courthouse. Lockett, he said, was killed by a system that found him guilty before he even stepped foot in the courtroom.
“We don’t know who killed Geneva Hardman,” Anthony wrote. “But we know who killed Will Lockett.”
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