Editing Pierce City, Missouri (section)

==History==

There was once a small village called St. Martha about two and a half miles west of Pierce City.  It was surveyed for William Robert Wild on Section 30, Pierce Township, May 9, 1870.  Wild committed suicide there on June 8, 1870.<ref>{{cite news |author=<!--Staff writer(s); no by-line.--> |title= Death of Mr. Robert Wild|url= http://digital.shsmo.org/cdm/compoundobject/collection/neoshot/id/119/rec/24|work= The Neosho Times|location= Neosho, Missouri|date= 1870-06-23|access-date= 2017-11-24}}</ref>  Nothing remains of the village.<ref>{{cite web |url= https://thelibrary.org/lochist/moser/lawrencepl.html|title= A Directory of Towns, Villages, and Hamlets Past and Present of Lawrence County, Missouri|last= Moser|first= Arthur Paul|publisher= Springfield-Greene County Library|access-date= 2017-11-24}}</ref>

===Founding and spelling===
Pierce City was laid out in 1870<ref>{{cite web| url=http://shsmo.org/manuscripts/ramsay/ramsay_lawrence.html| title=Lawrence County Place Names, 1928–1945 (archived)| publisher=The State Historical Society of Missouri| access-date=27 October 2016| url-status=bot: unknown| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160624071704/http://shsmo.org/manuscripts/ramsay/ramsay_lawrence.html| archive-date=24 June 2016}}</ref> as a stop on the [[Atlantic and Pacific Railroad]]. It was originally spelled Peirce City, named for Andrew Peirce, Jr. of Boston, president of the [[St. Louis–San Francisco Railway]].<ref name="Morrow2013"/>{{#tag:ref|Eaton in 1916 claimed the ''Peirce'' spelling was the error, originating in the founding charter; Eaton erroneously spells Andrew Peirce, Jr's name as ''Pierce''.<ref name="Morrow2013"/><ref>{{cite book | url=https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_RfAuAAAAYAAJ | title=How Missouri Counties, Towns and Streams Were Named | publisher=The State Historical Society of Missouri | author=Eaton, David Wolfe | year=1916 | pages=[https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_RfAuAAAAYAAJ/page/n81 184]}}</ref>|group="nb"}} The ''Pierce'' spelling was used erroneously by the [[United States Postal Service]] and adopted officially in the 1930s.<ref name="Morrow2013">{{cite book|last=Brown|first=Miriam Keast|title=The Story of Pierce City, Missouri, 1870-1970|year=1970|publisher=M.K. Brown|page=21}}; cited in {{cite book|last=Morrow|first=Lynn|title=The Ozarks in Missouri History: Discoveries in an American Region|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EfqKAQAAQBAJ&pg=PT173|access-date=31 May 2014|date=2013-12-29|publisher=University of Missouri Press|isbn=9780826273031|pages=173, fn. 1}}</ref><ref name="news1982"/> A 1982 attempt to revert to ''Peirce'' was rejected by the [[United States Census Bureau]].<ref name="news1982">{{cite news|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=LI9TAAAAIBAJ&dq=i-before-e&pg=6751%2C3162466|title=Bureau sticks with 'i' before 'e'|author=United Press International|date=1 September 1982|work=[[The Bulletin (Bend)|The Bulletin]]|page=15|access-date=28 February 2011|location=[[Bend, Oregon]]|author-link=United Press International}}</ref>

===1901 lynchings and expulsion ===
On August 19, 1901, a large white mob took three [[African-American]] men from jail in Pierce City and [[Lynching in the United States|lynched]] them. French and William Godley, and Peter Hampton,<ref name="list">[http://cousin-collector.com/projects/index.php/saline-county/history/1754-lynching-in-missouri "Lynchings in Missouri"], Saline County, Missouri: GenWeb Project, n.d.; accessed 12 April 2018</ref> were suspects in the murder of a young white woman. Two of the men were quite aged and were unlikely suspects; none had a chance at a trial. These are the only recorded lynchings in Lawrence County.<ref name="lynching">[https://eji.org/sites/default/files/lynching-in-america-third-edition-summary.pdf ''Lynching in America''/ ''Supplement: Lynchings by County, 3rd edition''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171023063004/https://eji.org/sites/default/files/lynching-in-america-third-edition-summary.pdf |date=2017-10-23 }}, Montgomery, Alabama: Equal Justice Initiative, 2015, p. 7</ref>

Unrest continued, and the white mob burned five black homes, and drove "30 families into the woods", affecting the roughly 300 black residents in the town. (It had about 1,000 white residents.) Most of the African Americans lost all their land and property; whites simply took over the empty properties.

This was part of a pattern of violence in southwest Missouri in the early 20th century; there were also large public lynchings in [[Joplin, Missouri|Joplin]] and [[Springfield, Missouri|Springfield]], resulting in many African Americans abandoning the region for less hostile territory. "Monett, Peirce City, Rogers, Ark., and several other towns around here have driven the negros out."<ref>{{cite news
|title=Negroes Lynched
|newspaper=[[Sedalia Democrat|Sedalia Weekly Democrat]]
|date=April 20, 1906
|page=9
|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/33765278/negros_lynched_in_springfield_missouri/}}</ref> By 1910 only 91 African Americans remained in Lawrence County and their numbers continued to decline.<ref name="harper">[https://books.google.com/books?id=QRR-xMoF0BIC&q=William+Allen,+Springfield,+April+15,+1906 Kimberly Harper, ''White Man's Heaven: The Lynching and Expulsion of Blacks in the Southern Ozarks, 1894-1909''], University of Arkansas Press (2012), p. 253</ref> The incident has been considered an act of [[ethnic cleansing]].<ref name="PBS">{{cite web |title=Pierce City, Missouri |url=https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/banished/pierce.html |website=Banished: American Ethnic Cleansings |publisher=PBS.org |access-date=2 September 2020}}</ref>

In reaction, [[Mark Twain]] wrote the essay ''[[The United States of Lyncherdom]]'', which was published posthumously.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Berry |first1=Dorothy |title=Pierce City: August 19th, 1901 |url=https://oaahm.omeka.net/exhibits/show/exodus/ozarksraceriots/piercecity |website=Ozarks Afro-American Heritage Museum |access-date=2 September 2020}}</ref>

In the 21st century, some descendants of the people who had been driven out of Pierce City threatened to file a lawsuit for the city's failure to protect their families and to recover the value of their families' properties, but none has been filed. There have been other grassroots efforts to acknowledge these crimes and injustices.

===Notable buildings===
The [[Lawrence County Bank Building]] and [[Pierce City Fire Station, Courthouse and Jail]] are listed on the [[National Register of Historic Places]].<ref name="nris">{{NRISref|version=2010a}}</ref>

===May 2003 tornado===
One of the most notable tornadoes of the [[May 2003 tornado outbreak sequence]] was the one that hit in Pierce City. According to reports, nearly all of the buildings in the town were damaged, destroyed, or liable to collapse. Damage was most severe in the historic downtown business district, where approximately 90 percent of the businesses and homes nearby were severely damaged, and they later had to be torn down. A nearby National Guard Armory, regularly used as the town's storm shelter, sustained heavy damage. J. Dale Taunton was killed; he was one of the several dozen people who had fled to the shelter.<ref>[http://springfield.news-leader.com/specialreports/tornadoes/0506-Ragingwind-49285.html Raging Winds...]</ref>

But, outside the main path of the tornado, many Pierce City structures, including homes and the Harold Bell Wright Museum, sustained little or no damage. The Pierce City tornado was rated F3 on the [[Fujita scale]].