Source: Higgason Family History, compiled by Virginia Witherington, pgs. 125-126.

Extracted from a local Arkansas newspaper
April 1931

PLANTER SLAIN
POSSE SEEKING NEGRO TENANT

Jack Martin of Bradley County Shot Four Times in Back

BANKS, April 28. -- (Special) -- Trouble between a planter and a negro tenant six miles south of here about 6 o'clock Monday night, resulted in the fatal shooting of the planter, Jack Martin, and the escape for the time being of the tenant, Jim Lawson, for whom Sheriff John C. Lee and a possee with bloodhounds from the state farm at Cummins were searching today.

Martin was a member of a well-known Bradley county family and son of Jim Martin. There were no witnesses of the shooting, it is said except the wife of the negro, Jim Lawson, and she left the scene immediately after the shooting, and also is at large. Whether she went with her husband, officers were not certain.

The shooting occurred in front of the tenant house occupied by Lawson. Martin was shot four times with a shotgun, once in the head and three times in the body. The shot appeared to have struck Martin in the back and are said to have been fired with a single-barreled shotgun, Martin carried an automatic shotgun, or pump gun, as it is called, but it had not been fired, officers believe.

The nature of the wounds, and the fact that Martin never got into action with his gun, led officers to believe that Martin and the negro had a bitter dispute and that the white man had turned away to leave the premises when the negro began firing. If he used the single-barreled gun as stated, he must have reloaded three times.

The negro, Lawson, is said not to have reported for work Monday morning, pleading illness. Martin went to the negro's shack late yesterday, presumably to remonstrate with him, and the shooting followed. Officers believed that if they could take Lawson's wife into custody they could learn more of the circumstances and, perhaps, locate Lawson.

Martin is survived by his wife and four small children; his parents; a brother, John Martin, and three sisters, Mrs. Edgar Rowland of Dumas, Miss Mary Ed Martin of Jersey, and Mrs. Ruth Cothran of Starkville, Miss. Funeral arrangements had not been announced today.