| Summary: | A series of newspaper and court documents recording the shooting of African-American resident of Lauderdale County Joe Cole by Florence African-American resident Anthony Agnew in January of 1902. <br /><br />the 41 year-old Cole, an employee of GW Pruitt was shot one mile East of Florence on the Waterloo Road while driving his wagon back from Florence, where he had been to sell a load of cotton, to Rhodesville, in West Lauderdale County, and instantly killed. <br /><br />Local resident Mark Haley discovered Cole's body riddled with slugs and buckshot, lying facedown in the road at about 3 o'clock that afternoon. Cole had been shot above the waist on his left side and in the head. Cole's team of horses apparently kept heading towards Rhodesville. <br /><br />At 8 pm Lauderdale County Sheriff OB Hill headed to the scene of the crime with bloodhounds from Tuscumbia, in Colbert County, and tracked one Anthony Agnew, 49 years old, to Koger Island, in the TN River; clues at Koger Island led Sheriff Hill to Baldwin, Mississippi, where, five days after the alleged murder, Agnew was captured on Sunday and remanded to jail. <br /><br />After a preliminary hearing before Justice McPeters Agnew was bound over to the grand jury without bail. He was tried in Florence in late March. <br /><br />Agnew was defended by RT Simpson, Jr. and George P. Jones, with WH Sawtelle and Cecil A. Beasley prosecuting. <br /><br />In the FOUR-DAY trial it was alleged that Agnew shot Cole because the married Cole was planning to run away with Agnew's wife, thus Agnew ambushed Cole from a blind along a wire fence on Waterloo Road, however the jury was hung, with six jurors voting "guilty" and six voting "not guilty."<br /><br />Agnew's second trial was held in September of 1902 and this time the jury found him "not guilty."<br /><br />Joseph "Joe" Cole (ca. 1861-1902), who had a "fair reputation" locally, was married to a woman named Bettie Cantrell (ca. 1862-1952) with two children. Joe was a farmer living at Gravelly Springs, near Rhodesville, in 1900.<br /><br />Oakland (near Rhodesville in Lauderdale County) resident and Baldwin, Mississippi native Anthony Agnew (ca. 1853-), said to be "a very superior negro" with an "excellent reputation," was married to a woman named Fannie and the couple had a total of 12 children, two of which had died by 1900.
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