This is an iHeart Podcast. And we return to our American stories. And up next, a story about the first black lawman. In Colorado, Willie Kennard. Here to tell a story is our regular contributor, Richard Munes.
Take it away, Rich. The man on horseback paused about a mile from the town. Like so many Old West communities, the town was made of logs, roughly sawn boards and nailed together with dreams. He studied the community for a moment before urging the horse towards it. He didn't look like much.
He was just a rangy, middle aged cowhand like so many cowhands across the West. But if you studied him, you know things about him. Where is Gonzalo? This was the sign of a man accustomed to fighting for his life. People looked at him with shock as he came into the town.
Now this was a novelty.
Some wondered what he's doing here. After all, the review was kinda round. Maybe he was lost. But the miners in the town of Yankee Hill, Colorado were certain of one thing. This man was trouble.
Why else would a black man be rided into their town? The year was 1874. The mining town is called Yankee Hill, Colorado, is high in the mountains. and it happened to be the personal playground of a man named Barty Casewit.
Now Barney had bullied and terrorized the town for over two years. It killed men. killed a marshal or two. scared off a few more and raped a fifteen year old girl named Bertie Campbell. When Bertie's father confronted him, Caswick gunned him down and left him dead in the street.
A town marshal, a man named Craig, tried to arrest him. Casewood laid him out right next to Bertie's father. Ben Reid from nearby Ruby Hill replaced Craig. He didn't do any better. The next marshal left town after seeing Casewood kill two saddle tramps.
Like the giant Goliath in the Bible, men fear doom. No one could match him, no one challenged him, no one. This was his and no one and nothing would take it away from him. What this particular Goliath hadn't counted on was that David's having an annoying tendency to just show up. In his case, David had just ridden into town.
Matt Borden. owned a square deal general store. He was also the mayor of Yankee Hill. And here a couple of the city councilmen were discussing town business in Fat Sarah Palmer's Cafe over coffee. the black cowboy walked in.
He went straight over to them and said, My name is Willie Kennett. I read your town's looking for a marshal. I'd like to apply for the job. Borden would say years later that he wasn't impressed. One of the councilmen looked up at Kennard and asked, You can read, boy?
But if the comment irritated Willie, he didn't show it. Borden decided to have some fun with the applicant. He said the hiring process is pretty steep. We have to make sure you can handle the job. Oh, and what is that?
There's a man in the bar across the street. He'd already killed several men to include two former marshals. Arrest him and the job is yours. They handed him the marshal badge, fairly sure they'd be getting it back soon. With a nod, the newly minted marshal started walking across the street.
Now, if these men expected Willie to run or just to die, they've grossly underestimated him. Willie was a battle-hardened warrior. He'd fought as a corporal with the 7th Illinois Rifle Company. He had also served with the 9th Cavalry, an entirely black unit that was in Fort Bliss, Texas. I later moved out to Fort Davis, Arizona.
very far against the Apaches. Being a corporal made him a leader of men. His time in the units soon convinced others he knew his way around a firearm, and he became an instructor at the Montrose training camp. When the war was over, and like so many others, Willie looked around and found very few opportunities for a man of his talents.
So he drifted to Denver. And one day he reads about this town and needs a marshal.
Now with minutes behind the badge, he walked into the saloon and he sees Casefoot. Spend a minute studying him, knowing how he also wore his pistols low. and he studied the man's two associates.
Soon he approached the table and informs Casewood that he is under arrest.
Well, case witness friends thought that was probably the funniest thing they'd ever heard. I'm supposed to just come with you, Casewood asked. Where are we going? It's your choice, Willie answered. You can go to jail or you can go to hell.
Well now guess what was in the pickle? And he had exactly two choices. Surrender or add to his list of killings. Option one didn't appeal to him. Option two is easy.
He still had intended to add to his list and started to reach for his pistols. What happened next is debated.
Some say before he even touched the guns, Willie had drawn and fired twice. They said the bullets struck the pistols, nearly ripping him from the gun belt. and render both weapons useless. Others say that Willie Drew And club casewood hard across the side of the head with a drawn pistol. Unlike the Galocks and weapons favored today, The OS pistol was American heavy metal at its very best.
While the stories dispute what uh happened to Caseworth, No one disputes what happened to the case with buddies. Both tried to draw on the new marshal, and before they even got half way out, He had taken them both out with a bullet between the eyes. The casework went to jail. Justice was very swift back then. Case who was tried for the rape of the Campbell girl?
the murders of the marshals and the townspeople, and he was taken to the edge of town to a pine tree in Hung. Stories have it that he wrapped his legs around the tree in an effort to keep from dying. But all I did was prolong his agonies. It was a fitting end for this brutal man. And the town of Yankee Hill had a new marshal.
Willie was paid $100 a month. who's a little bit shy of $2,300 in today's money.
Now he did get tested again. There was a robber named Billy McGeorge. He was an escapee from the Colorado Territorial Prison. He formed a gang around himself and they played on the freight wagons and stages around the gold trail. The town council asked Marshal Kinner to track him down.
Well, Kennard realized this wasn't such a great idea. Colorado is huge, Colorado is rugged, He could chase these guys all over the territory until doomsday and still never catch them. I'm going to make them come to me, he said.
Soon. wanted posters started showing up on trees and posts. The Marshal had put a bounty on McGeorge's head of a measly $50.
Now this Tick McGeorge off quite a bit. Every other marshal around was asking at least three hundred. But 50 bucks? That almost wasn't worth walking across the street for.
So what he decided to do was go into Yankee Hill him and his gang and they were going to explain the facts of life to this black man who had insulted him so.
Well they got to Yankee Hill and Marshal Kennedy was waiting for them. He was armed with a double-barrel shotgun. You men can just drop your weapons, Kennedy ordered, leveling the shotgun at them. One of them, an outlaw named Cash Downey, tried to pull on Willie. Willie blew him off the horse with a blast from the shotgun.
The blast also killed the outlaw right next to Downey. the window of the general store. With one barrel still loaded and aimed right at him, McGeorge told his men to surrender. As Keener took them to jail, they breathed out threats of vengeance. They never got the chance.
They soon found themselves dangling from the same tree that Casewood had died on a few months before. By 1877, Yankee Hill was a quiet town. But it was also a dyantown. The gold in the area had ran out. People are just moving on.
Willie looked around, realizing the place was going to be at ghost town soon. He handed in his badge and said, I'm going out east. find myself a wife. Then Willie vanishes from history forever. where he went, when he died, Are he's buried?
Join knowns. For the time being, and like so many Old West heroes, Willie Kennard rode into history. leaving a lasting legacy as Colorado's first black lawman. And a special thanks to Monty for doing the production on that piece, and to Richard Munez for his terrific storytelling. And by the way, this was a real life bad guy terrorizing a town.
and needed a real life, tough, good guy. They save them. And he did. And my goodness, the stories of towns, we've told a few, and we'll be telling a lot more. Send them to OurAmericanStories.com.
We'll listen to in hundreds affiliates. all over this great country, and we love hearing your stories. Send them. Heroes in your town. whether it's cops versus responders.
Or, well, heroic stories going way back to the early days in your town. Willie Kennard. Colorado's first black lawman. Here on Our American Story. Boomerang.
This is Lee Habib, host of Our American Stories. Every day on this show, we tell stories of history, faith, business, love, loss, and your stories. Send us your story, small or large. To our email, OAS at ouramericanstories.com. That's OAS at OuramericanStories.com.
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