The Battle of Hayes Pond took place on January 18, 1958. A clash or skirmish more than a battle, the event pitted two groups against one another—a Ku Klux Klan rally of about 50 men and a spontaneous gathering of about 500 Lumbee Indians. The place was near a pond close to Maxton, North Carolina, and the occurrence is sometimes called the “Maxton Riot.”
The conflict reveals the complex and emotional times in the South after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling, which required all public schools in the country to be racially integrated. The decision rejuvenated the Ku Klux Klan, which was bitterly opposed to desegration. “In demonstrating its opposition to the desegregation order, the Klan used a variety of techniques; bombings, parades, rallies and cross burnings occurred throughout the state during the mid and late fifties,” writes Cynthia Fox in a master’s thesis on the Hayes Pond brawl.[1]
However, the Battle of Hayes Pond was not about black-and-white relations. It was, oddly, an effort by Ku Klux Klan members to condemn marriage between whites and Lumbee Indians and to discourage other interaction between whites and the Lumbee.
The Lumbee Tribe is composed of about 30,000 people located near the Lumber (or Lumbee) River in Robeson County in southeastern North Carolina. They are descendants of several tribes originally in North Carolina who found refuge from whites in the swampy land around the river. The Lumbee have only limited congressional recognition as a tribe and do not live on a reservation. In the 1950s they were primarily farmers.
The Buildup
The Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan in the Carolinas was James William “Catfish” Cole, a preacher from South Carolina. He had heard about a white-Lumbee marriage, and (he later claimed) about the infidelity of the woman in that marriage. Cole decided to hold a rally near the center of the Lumbee population to scare the Indians into stopping such relationships.
“In the days leading to the rally, the Klan sought to incite fear amongst the Lumbee population, burning crosses in the yards of an Indian family that had recently moved to a ‘white’ neighborhood and an Indian woman who was rumored to be dating a white man,” wrote Chelsea K. Barnes in 2021. “A caravan made its way through the streets, hurling insults and inviting supporters to come hear the Klan chaplain speak about ‘Why I Believe in Segregation.’”[2]
Cole even invited a local reporter to accompany him at the two cross burnings. The reporter’s article in the Scottish Chief was picked up by other papers and further aroused the local population. The sheriff of Robeson County tried to persuade Cole to call off the rally, but he didn’t.
On the night of the proposed rally, January 18, about 50 Klansmen gathered in the early evening. But before their rally started, Lumbees began arriving in cars and lining up at the rally site. Both Klansmen and Lumbees were armed with rifles and shotguns. The sheriff was there with a few men, although the sheriff had told Cole the Klan would not receive protection (state highway police were called in later).
The Event
The Lumbees started the fracas by shattering a lamp that had been rigged up on the site. That led to darkness and to the descent of Lumbees on the Klan, shooting and shouting. Most of the Klansmen fled, including Cole. While the Lumbees did not shoot directly at anyone, they dragged some Klansmen from their cars and damaged at least two cars. Four people were injured, according to Fox: “two newspapermen, one Klansman and a soldier from Ft. Bragg who had gone AWOL to watch the rally.”[3]
The sheriff called in a group of highway patrolmen who brought the brawl to an end, using tear gas. The Klansmen ran away as best they could, leaving paraphernalia behind, including their KKK banner. Two Lumbees carried it away as a souvenir and displayed it; Life Magazine published the photograph.
No Lumbees were arrested, but Cole was extradited to North Carolina after he fled to his home in South Carolina. Another Klan member, James Garland Martin, was arrested for being drunk and carrying a concealed weapon. The grand jury indictment against Cole and Martin said that they and “unknown” others “did willfully, riotously and unlawfully assemble together of their own authority in such manner . . . reasonably as to create in the minds of firm and courageous persons a well founded fear of threatening danger to the public peace.”[4]
The two were found guilty. Martin was fined, but Cole received a prison sentence of 18 to 24 months.
The Reaction
Understandably, there was little sympathy for the Klan members, and the Lumbees were considered heroes, although the press treated the whole incident somewhat lightly. A New York Times editorial quickly pointed out that what they did was “certainly illegal” (and would have been “unnecessary” if the county police had done their jobs). [5]
In her 1979 thesis, Cynthia Fox looked carefully at the trial record and compared the judge’s decision to what the U.S. Supreme Court was saying at the time about free speech. The Klansmen had a right to assemble and speak, she pointed out, and the Lumbees (none of whom was arrested) were the instigators.
Acknowledging this, Malinda Maynor Lowery, a Lumbee, wrote in 2020: “After decades of being denied those rights themselves, they [the Lumbees] were hardly anxious to exercise constitutional fair play. Yet clearly the Indians were aggressive and could justifiably have been charged and sentenced under any number of statutes.”[6] On the other hand, wrote Chelsea Barnes, “Their story is a point of pride for Lumbees of today and yesterday, and it is a story that deserves to be told.”[7]