The story of the lynching site where Jason Aldean filmed a music video

The red, white and blue bunting celebrating Armistice Day covered the courthouse as the mob of hundreds of people prepared to hang the battered body of a Black teenager for everyone on the city’s main street to see.

Henry Choate was accused of attacking a 16-year-old White girl before an armed mob in Columbia, Tenn., used sledgehammers to kidnap him from jail in November 1927, according to news reports. In less than 10 minutes, the mob of an estimated 350 White men dragged the 18-year-old from the back of a car through the city and lynched him from the second story of the Maury County Courthouse over an allegation that he denied.

Even though the girl could not positively identify Choate as the assailant, the Black teen allegedly confessed in an effort to save his life. One of the mob members holding a rope taunted the teen before the noose was tied to Choate’s neck and his body tossed over the balcony.

“Well that sends you to hell,” the man said to Choate, according to the International News Service. “Here you go!”

The rope used to lynch Choate hanged at the courthouse for several weeks.

Nearly a century later, Choate’s lynching is getting more attention after country star Jason Aldean filmed the music video for his song, “Try That in a Small Town,” at the Maury County Courthouse.

The Tennessee native has faced backlash in recent days for filming the music video at the site of Choate’s lynching, as well as lyrics that critics say evoke vigilantism and promote gun violence. The video, which shows a large U.S. flag hanging from the courthouse where Choate was lynched, was removed from CMT’s rotation in response to the criticism.

Aldean denounced the allegations of “releasing a pro-lynching song” in a statement posted to Twitter on Tuesday. “These references are not only meritless, but dangerous,” Aldean wrote. “There is not a single lyric in the song that references race or points to it - and there isn’t a single video clip that isn’t real news footage - and while I can try and respect others to have their own interpretation of a song with music - this one goes too far.”

The lynching of Choate has long haunted Maury County, where about 20 Black men and boys were lynched, killed by other methods or “disappeared” by White mobs or the Ku Klux Klan, according to research from historian Elizabeth Queener cited in the Tennessean. Columbia, which is less than 50 miles southwest of Nashville, was also the site of the Columbia Race Riot of 1946, the first post-World War II riot of its kind, which nearly resulted in the lynching of Thurgood Marshall.

On Nov. 11, 1927, Sarah Harlan was waiting for a school bus on a remote stretch of road outside Columbia when a Black male allegedly tore her clothing and attempted to shoot her, according to a 1927 report in the Tennessean. The assailant then allegedly hit her on the forehead with the butt of his pistol and scarred her neck when he tried to choke her that Friday morning, the newspaper reported.

After she scratched his face and bit his finger until it bled, Harlan cried out that her brother was on his way, and the assailant fled.

“Now I guess you’ll get it,” Harlan told him, according to the Tennessean.

Choate was in town visiting his grandfather, Henry Clay Harlan (no relation to Sarah Harlan), for Armistice Day, now known as Veterans Day. Not long after Choate arrived, a law enforcement posse led by a pair of bloodhounds, George and Queen, went to the grandfather’s home and arrested the teen.

Maury County Sheriff Luther Wiley claimed that Choate had changed a bloody shirt and hid a .22-caliber pistol used to club the White girl. Authorities claimed that Choate’s grandfather denied his grandson’s alibi that he was helping him gather corn when the attack unfolded, the Tennessean reported. Wiley said that Choate had a wound on his finger resembling a bite mark, and other witnesses put Choate in the vicinity of the attack when it happened, but it’s unclear whether those accounts were reliable.

But when it came time for Sarah Harlan to positively identify her alleged assailant, she couldn’t do it.

“Confronted with Choate this afternoon, the girl said he resembled her assailant but she was unable to identify him positively,” the newspaper reported.

Before Choate was taken to jail, the girl’s mother pleaded with the mob that was eager to lynch him to spare his life after her daughter was unable to positively say that it was him who attacked her. The mother “asked them to spare the Negro for trial,” the Tennessean reported. Yet the mob attempted to grab Choate, but he had already been taken to the county jail.

At the jail, Wiley gave the key to Choate’s cell to his (Wiley’s) wife. The wife - who is not named in media reports from the period - told Ella Gant, the jail’s Black cook, about what was unfolding.

“Ella, I hate this,” she said, according to Robert Minor’s 1946 book, “Lynching and Frame-Up in Tennessee.” “They are going to mob this boy they brought in. . . . Go and tell the boy to pray, because they’re going to kill him.”

Gant went to Choate’s cell and passed along the message: “Boy, Mrs. Wiley says you better pray, because the mob is coming to lynch you.”

Choate wasn’t in the mood for praying but understood what was about to happen.

“I know they are,” he said, according to Minor.

It was about 8 p.m. when the mob came to the jail looking for blood. The sheriff had told the crowd that there would be a trial for Choate on the following Monday, but the mob had decided that the 18-year-old must die. Wiley’s wife hid the key and pleaded with the mob not to kill Choate.

“You all go away,” she said, according to the 1946 book. “I am not going to see an innocent boy hung.”

When one of the mob members threatened to use dynamite on the jail, Wiley’s wife became terrified and handed over the key, which she had hidden behind a laundry bag. When a deputy sheriff opened the jail cell and mob members yelled out, “Come out, Choate,” the teen was struck on the head with a sledgehammer. Choate, dead, was dragged out to a car, tied with a rope to the bumper and dragged by his neck about 300 yards to the courthouse, Minor wrote.

The lynching was about to happen as several ministers and James Finney, the editor of the Tennessean, were attending an American Legion Armistice Day banquet in Columbia. They tried to intervene, but their efforts failed.

“Go ahead back to your banquet!” a lynch mob member yelled, according to the Tennessean. “You are having your fun over there. Now let us alone while we have ours out here.”

Choate’s body was hanged over the balcony of the courthouse with the patriotic bunting. The next day, Willis White, a police officer, went to a funeral home with a request, according to Minor.

“There’s a dead Negro at the courthouse; come and get him,” White said.

More than two weeks after the lynching, a Maury County grand jury declined to prosecute anyone who participated in Choate’s killing.

“In this matter, we report that we are unable to find evidence upon which to return a true bill against any person participating in this affair, or in any way responsible for the death of the Negro,” the grand jury wrote in a statement to Judge W.B. Turner, according to the Tennessean. “The witnesses examined who would be expected to be able to identify the parties actively engaged in the offense are unable to identify any of those who took part.”

The lynching was denounced by Finney in the newspaper as a heinous act that the city should not ignore.

“Executions by mobs are murder, nothing more and nothing less,” Finney wrote. Once the lynching had been announced, the newspaper added that Finney gave a statement of what Choate’s killing meant to the city’s history: “Maury County had been disgraced.”