NNP Blog

4 DECEMBER 2021

Carolina Token Society Journals on Newman Portal

CARTNEWS, published by the Carolina Token Society, has been digitized by Newman Numismatic Portal and is now online for the period 2004-2016. A recent issue (August 2014) describes a “good for” token of Profile Cotton in Jacksonville, AL, c. 1920, and relates how its proprietor William Ivan Greenleaf was hung in effigy, by a mob incensed with Greenleaf’s labor practices:“Finally, when the people were mad enough, they went after their tormenter. They fetched Greenleaf from a closet and bore him to Big Spring, to the hanging tree. He didn’t seem to weigh all that much for a big shot, and they slung him from man to man like a rag doll as they cursed, laughed, and hooted. When they slipped the rope over his head the crowd screamed, and women in faded flower-print dresses pushed children behind them, so they could not see. In the glow of a hundred torches, they raised him high, their scarred arms and mutilated fingers his gallows. His face was covered with a toe sack, but they hung a sign around his neck so everyone would know: GREENLEAF. Then they let him drop.”Newman Portal acknowledges Tony Chibbaro and Don Bailey of the Carolina Token Society for their assistance with this project. Link to CARTNEWS on Newman Portal: https://nnp.wustl.edu/library/publisherdetail/526524