How Lem Motlow Got Away with Murder

When describing Lemuel ”Lem” Motlow, the nephew of Jack Daniels and eventual owner of Daniel’s distillery, a company website mentions his service in the Tennessee legislature and his reputation as a businessman, concluding that he was “known to be a fair and generous man.”  What it fails to mention is that in 1923, Motlow, shown here, shot and killed a man in cold blood and got away with it by playing “the race card.”

Jack Daniels, the famed Tennessee distiller, never married. His sister, Nettie, wed Felix Motlow and had four sons, among them Lem, born in November, 1869.  The  young man early on began working for his uncle at his Lynchburg distillery, learning the whiskey trade from the ground up.  When Daniels became enfeebled near the end of his life, about 1907 he gave the distillery to Motlow.

For the next 13 years, Motlow ran the Daniels distillery with intelligence and skill, increasing its capacity and its reputation for good whiskey.  Jack Daniel’s Tennessee whiskey cost more than than other whiskey.  The company claimed no other distiller made whiskey with “pure limestone water” or mellowed the product through hard maple charcoal — both adding to the cost.  Recognizing the need to market the price differential effectively, Motlow coined the slogan:  “All Goods Worth Price Charged.”

Lem used that slogan with his name on jugs of Jack Daniels whiskey.  Shown throughout this post, the ceramic containers came in several varieties, including two-toned jugs with Albany slip brown tops and bristol glaze bodies.  The jug below left left recently sold at auction for $1,576.00. Motlow also featured a range of jugs below with a bail handle, a feature that made carrying easier.

In 1920 when National Prohibition shut down his distillery, Motlow started a mule auction.  Tiny Lynchburg became one of the largest mule trading centers in the southern U.S.  This success meant little to Lem who was seething at having to shut down making whiskey.  Morover, he had been left with a sizeable amount of liquor on his hands with nowhere legitimately to sell it.   As a counter, he moved his operations to St. Louis, taking over a building on Duncan Avenue, shown below, and moving his liquor stash there.  In 1923 he made a deal to sell it to a local St. Louis businessman.

Before the deal could be concluded, an incident occurred that cast suspicion on Motlow.  Prohibitionary laws dictated that liquor already distilled had to be kept under strict guard and a crew were employed by the Feds to watch Motlow’s 1,000 barrels of Jack Daniels whiskey. In August 1923, however, thieves in St. Louis managed skillfully to siphon away 893 barrels of liquor through a hidden hose that fed the whiskey to containers outside and then disappeared.  Federal authorities fingered Motlow as the culprit and charged him with bootlegging.  

Whether Lem was a habitual drinker seems unlikely but the stress of suspicion and a court appearance early on March 17, 1924, may have impelled him that afternoon to drink heavily with friends.  Drunk and packing a pistol, Lem boarded the Louisville & Nashville night train back to Tennessee.  Tired, he headed for a Pullman berth.

A black sleeping car porter named Ed Wallis asked Motlow for his ticket.  When Motlow was unable to produce one, Wallis refused him a berth. Motlow became enraged at being balked by a person of color.  Hearing the argument, Conductor Clarence Pullis, who was white, tried to intervene.  As the train slowly made its way through a downtown tunnel toward the Mississippi, Lem reached for his pistol, apparently to shoot Wallis.  In his drunken state, he fired two shots, one errantly, the second striking Pullis in the abdomen.

Taken off the train, Pullis died in a local hospital, leaving his widow and two minor children.  Motlow was charged with murder.  Local sentiment ran high against the Tennessee distiller.  The newspapers gave the story front page treatment.  As  wealthy man, however, Lem had ample resources at his disposal.  He hired a phalanx of lawyers to defend him.  They included Patrick Cullen, a prominent St. Louis attorney.  Shown below is a photo from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch showing Motlow, seated far left, and seven of his legal team.

Wallis testified that an enraged Motlow had asked Pullis, “Where did you get that black….”  The porter related that he was shoved by the defendant, who then pulled the pistol from his coat and fired.  The defense built its case on Wallis’s race.  The porter was quizzed on whether he belonged to any civil rights organizations.  Cullen mocked him by adopting a black dialect.  In his testimony Motlow, seen here as sketched on the witness stand, claimed that Wallis had been arrogant.  The newspaper reported:  “…He said Wallis grabbed him by the throat.  ‘I reached for my pistol,” Motlow said, “‘then somebody grabbed my hand from behind and the pistol accidentally discharged twice.’”  

No subtlety attended the defense playing “the race card.” In closing arguments one of Motlow’s lawyers said:  “There are two kinds of (blacks) in the South. There are those who know their place ... and those who have ambitions for racial equality. ... In such a class falls Wallis, the race reformer, the man who would be socially equal to you all, gentlemen of the jury.”  The all white, all male jury took little time in bringing a verdict of “not guilty.”  The foreman told reporters:  “We didn’t believe the Negro.  Jurors shook hands with Motlow as he left the courtroom on December 10 — a free man.  The photograph above shows him, third from left, departing with his attorneys.  

In time, to his great relief, Motlow also was cleared of the bootlegging charges. If convicted he could have been stripped of his ownership of the Lynchburg distillery and subjected to other penalties.  Again ably defended, his lawyers convinced the jury that the Tennesseean had been double-crossed by his associates.  For a second time a St. Louis jury absolved him.

With the slate clean, Motlow returned to Tennessee to resume trading mules and subsequently decided to run for office when local courts denied him the right to begin distilling immediately after Repeal.  He was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1933 and was successful in being licensed to distill in 1938, although his county officially continued to be a “dry.”  In 1939, Lem ran and won a seat on the Tennessee Senate.  With his wealth, Motlow bought thousands of acres of farmland in at least two counties while engaging in his hobby of raising Tennessee walking horses.

Motlow was married twice. His first wife, Clara Reagor died in 1901, leaving him a son, J. Reagor Motlow.  He then married Ophelia Williams with whom he had a daughter, Mary, and three more sons. Connor, Evans — called “Hap” — and Robert.  As the boys matured he employed them in the Jack Daniels Distillery learning the business.  After Lem suffered a stroke in 1940 the youths began to play more important roles in the operation, Reagor as general manager.  Dying in September 1947 at the age of 77, Motlow was buried in the Lynchburg Cemetery.

The Motlow brothers, with Reagor now as the president of the company, continued to increase production and maintained the reputation for quality initiated by Daniels and their father.  Although Jack Daniels remains the titan of Tennessee whiskey, Lem has been remembered from time to time with a brand of his own.  In 1956 the Motlow family sold its distilling interests to Brown-Foreman of Louisville, Kentucky.