ESPECIALLY IN THE LATE 1800s, the Oregon frontier was no stranger to acts of judicial lynching – where the local legal system was corrupted to provide cover for murder. What’s more unusual, though, was an 1852 event that amounted to judicial cattle rustling.

The cattle that the Benton County courts rustled belonged to a woman named Letitia Carson, and she was the widow of a recently naturalized Irishman named David Carson — or, rather, she would have been David’s widow, if the two of them had been allowed to marry. But they weren’t, because Letitia Carson was black, and a former slave — born in Kentucky in the late 1810s.

The other factor that makes this episode of judicial rustling unusual is that Letitia took the thieves to court — and won. Twice. (Corvallis, Benton County; 1850s, 1860s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1912b.letitia-carson-fought-racist-neighbor-in-court.html)