Who remembers Houseboat row??
100 YEARS AGO
Manuel Head, alias Islano, was arrested and charged with assault with intent to murder Policeman Thomas Lowe.
(Just a horrible name, no matter how you spin it)
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Well this guy didn't fair too well. (same guy Head is Cabeza in Spanish)
Key West -- reputed to be a liberal, accepting town these days -- was not immune to Klan violence. Ten months after the Klan of the Keys charter was signed, the Keys had its only documented lynching.
The victim was Manuel Cabeza -- his nickname was El Isleno, Spanish for "the islander," a World War I veteran who owned a small bar and sporting club called the Red Rooster on Thomas Street. It was no secret he was dating a mixed-race woman named Angela, half-black and half-Cuban, and the two eventually moved in together.
On Dec. 21, 1921, he and Angela were awakened in the middle of the night by a group of hooded Klansmen who crashed through their bedroom door. Cabeza, who was known as a tough guy, managed to fight off several of them, but eventually was overpowered when they beat him with baseball bats. They tied him up with rope and carried him to Petronia Street, where they tarred and feathered him.
In the struggle, Cabeza managed to pull the hoods off two Klan members: William Decker, the manager of a cigar factory off Whitehead Street, and a Trumbo Point railroad terminal baggage handler, who was not at work when Cabeza went looking for him.
Cabeza exacted his revenge on Decker on Christmas Day.
Armed with an Army-issue Colt revolver, Cabeza hailed a taxicab and rode around Key West looking for Decker, whom he eventually spotted in his car in front of the Cuban Club on Upper Duval Street. The taxi made a U-turn in the street and Cabeza leaned out of the window and pointed the pistol at Decker.
He shot and killed him right there.
The taxi made its way to the Solana Building at the corner of Petronia and Whitehead streets. Cabeza ran inside and climbed to the cupola. A standoff began.
Sheriff Roland Curry persuaded local Navy officials to dispatch the Marines to help arrest Cabeza. Curry tried to persuade Cabeza to surrender and promised his safety, but Cabeza surrendered only when he was promised that deputy and former U.S. Marshal A.H. McGinnis, whom he trusted, would take him into custody.
Written accounts questioned how fairly Curry would have treated Cabeza, and suspicions about him grew as later events unfolded. Some speculated there were KKK members in the sheriff's ranks.
Cabeza was taken to the county jail, where Marines met him to protect him from a KKK reprisal. By midnight, Curry had relieved the Marines of their duty, telling them that tensions had eased and the situation was under control. Within an hour of the Marines leaving, five carloads of hooded Klansmen came to the jail, supposedly overpowered the sheriff, and made their way to Cabeza's second-floor jail cell.
They forcibly removed Cabeza, whose screams reportedly filled the jail as they beat him. Some accounts say he was dead by the time they dragged him out of the jail. They took him to a remote area off Flagler Avenue known as the dam, where they hanged him from a tree and riddled his body with bullets, according to published reports.
None of the men named on the 1921 charter was ever linked to the crime, Hambright said.
"There were never any suspects," Hambright said. "There were never any arrests."
