By MDDC Board of Directors
The Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association has removed Edward J. Clarke, the late editor and owner of the Worcester Democrat, from its Hall of Fame after a review of his published work revealed vile commentary, extreme racism and the promotion of lynching.
Clarke was editor and owner of the Worcester Democrat, which existed from 1921 to 1953. His personal writing and his newspaper’s coverage of a 1940 murder and assault case in Pocomoke City, Md., contained horrible, angry rants and racial attacks targeting three Black men, George B. Selby, Arthur Collick and Charles Manuel, in connection with the death of farmer Harvey Pilchard, who was White, and assault of his wife, Annie Pilchard, who also was White.
A Black woman, Martha Blake, and her teenage daughter, Lillian, were accused of being accomplices, but never charged.
Clarke was vicious and dehumanizing in his opinion writing, likening the accused to “a rabid dog” and “savages” and “brutes” and “a disease-spreading germ” and “garbage.” He championed “a good stout rope, a noose at one end, good stout arms at the other, a neck and a limb of a tree” as justice to be applied to “fiends who violated the home” of the White couple.
Coverage of the case from other newspapers at the time provided a contrast to Clarke’s White supremacist tone and made clear how much Clarke aligned with racial vigilante attitudes of the time. A mob estimated to be 1,000 people broke into the jail and dragged the Blakes away. Law enforcement officers were able to rescue them from the mob.
Clarke was openly racist and brutish not just in his views, but also in opinions he shared from those who supported his positions. In one letter he published, a writer said residents of the county should “show their sympathy in a real and convincing manner” by seeing that “Mrs. Pilchard is not forced to undergo the terrible ordeal of a court trial.”
This letter writer offered to play a part in “giving the prisoners ‘the same road into the vast unknown by which they sent their innocent victims.’” Clarke published racist viewpoints with pride and leveled sharp criticism at others who disagreed.
The MDDC Press Association board condemns in the strongest terms the ideas expressed in Clarke’s writing and in his newspaper coverage, which also was racist. “Clarke and his repugnant views are banished from any place of stature or honor within our association,” said Rebecca Snyder, executive director of MDDC.
His 1940s columns were uncovered through reporting by Gabriel Pietrorazio of the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of Maryland in their #PrintingHate series, reviewing racist media coverage of the past. An article about the Pocomoke City incident will be published in early December 2021.
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