On February 11, 1867, Archibald Beebe — a Black drayman in Fayetteville, North Carolina — was shot and killed in front of a large crowd as he was being led from the Fayetteville Market House following a court hearing. He had been accused of assaulting a white woman with intent to rape, a charge he denied. He had sought help from the Freedmen’s Bureau. He had told them: I didn’t do this. It did not matter. William J. Tolar, a former Confederate captain, shot him anyway. No one in the crowd would testify against Tolar. The coroner’s jury ruled the death came from persons unknown — despite the presence of dozens of witnesses.
The Market House where Beebe was killed was the same building where enslaved people had been bought and sold before the Civil War. Two years after emancipation, it remained a site of racial terror in the center of Fayetteville. The killing of Archibald Beebe was not an isolated act of individual violence — it was a public demonstration of white supremacist power during Reconstruction, carried out in broad daylight, at the most visible location in the city, to send a message about what Black life was worth in Cumberland County.
What happened next was unusual. North Carolina’s Reconstruction military government, backed by federal authority, conducted an investigation and brought charges. Five men were tried: Duncan G. McRae, William J. Tolar, David Watkins, Samuel Phillips, and Thomas Powers. Important Black witnesses testified at trial, including men who would go on to help found Fayetteville’s public Black university — Fayetteville State — that same year. The verdict was remarkable: three of the five defendants were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. For a brief moment, Reconstruction’s promise of equal justice appeared to be real.
It was not real. The trial commission downgraded the death sentences to hard labor. Then President Andrew Johnson — who had been systematically dismantling Reconstruction since taking office — pardoned all of the convicted men. When the boat carrying the pardoned men docked on the Cape Fear River, church bells rang across Fayetteville. The Fayetteville Eagle newspaper celebrated: “You are honored. The right hand of every true man will receive you and help you on to prosperity and happiness.” William J. Tolar went on to buy thousands of acres of land. His son later erected a monument in Cross Creek Cemetery honoring Tolar and his Confederate brothers — a monument that still stands.
Archibald Beebe had no monument. His name was not widely known outside his family for over 150 years. His descendant Vanessa Moore has spent years working to ensure that his story is told and that he is remembered in the city where he was killed. The Market House at the center of Fayetteville — the building where enslaved people were sold, where Beebe was led before he was shot, where the debate about Fayetteville’s racial history continues today — is the physical location where the Two Americas argument is most visible. Persecution and contribution did not happen in the abstract in Fayetteville. They happened on Hay Street. They happened at the Market House. Archibald Beebe’s name belongs in this record.