Qualla: Battle of Hayes Pond https://qualla.com/battle-of-hayes-pond en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:14 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/p/t/battle-of-hayes-pond-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Battle of Hayes Pond https://qualla.com/battle-of-hayes-pond Battle of Hayes Pond: Introduction https://qualla.com/battle-of-hayes-pond/ Photo credit Bill Norment, The Robesonian, Public domain. The single lightbulb dangling from a pole was the only thing holding the night together. When a Lumbee marksman shot it out, the cornfield near Hayes Pond plunged into darkness, gunfire cracked across the winter air, and fifty Klansmen discovered what several hundred armed Native Americans thought of their rally. It was January 18, 1958, in Robeson County, North Carolina, and a man named James W. "Catfish" Cole had made the worst miscalculation of his career. Cole, a Ku Klux Klan organizer from South Carolina, had spent weeks driving through the county with a loudspeaker truck, advertising a rally to intimidate the Lumbee people into accepting racial segregation. The Lumbees had a different plan.

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Image: Bill Norment, The Robesonian | Public domain

]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/p/t/battle-of-hayes-pond-wp/dnpt-battle-of-hayes-pond-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Battle of Hayes Pond: A County Like No Other https://qualla.com/battle-of-hayes-pond/ Photo credit Auburn University, Public domain. Robeson County in the 1950s operated under a system of tripartite segregation found nowhere else in the American South. Whites, Black residents, and Native Americans each had their own schools, their own public spaces, their own unwritten rules. The Lumbee people -- descendants o...

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Image: Auburn University | Public domain

]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/p/t/battle-of-hayes-pond-wp/dnpt-battle-of-hayes-pond-a-county-like-no-other.mp3 0:06 2 full Battle of Hayes Pond: Cross Burnings and a Loudspeaker Truck https://qualla.com/battle-of-hayes-pond/ Photo credit Indy beetle, CC0. Cole's provocation was deliberate and public. On January 13, 1958, he invited a local journalist to watch as Klansmen burned a cross near the home of a Lumbee woman in St. Pauls who was dating a white man, and another in Lumberton near an Indian family that had moved into a white...

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]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/p/t/battle-of-hayes-pond-wp/dnpt-battle-of-hayes-pond-cross-burnings-and-a-loudspeaker-truck.mp3 0:06 3 full Battle of Hayes Pond: The Night the Light Went Out https://qualla.com/battle-of-hayes-pond/ Photo credit Indy beetle, CC0. Cole chose a leased cornfield near Hayes Pond, just outside Maxton, and set up a portable generator, a public address system, a banner reading "KKK," and a cross to burn. About fifty Klansmen showed up, most of them Cole's followers from South Carolina. What they had not counted ...

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]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/p/t/battle-of-hayes-pond-wp/dnpt-battle-of-hayes-pond-the-night-the-light-went-out.mp3 0:06 4 full Battle of Hayes Pond: Justice in Robeson County https://qualla.com/battle-of-hayes-pond/ Photo credit Indy beetle, CC0. The aftermath played out in two courtrooms. Martin was tried first, before Judge Pro Tem Lacy Maynor -- only the second Native American judge in Robeson County history. Maynor gave Martin a suspended sixty-day sentence and told him plainly: "Your organization has nothing to offer...

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]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/p/t/battle-of-hayes-pond-wp/dnpt-battle-of-hayes-pond-justice-in-robeson-county.mp3 0:06 5 full Battle of Hayes Pond: A Story That Echoed Forward https://qualla.com/battle-of-hayes-pond/ Photo credit Dudetheking, CC BY-SA 4.0. Newspapers across the country covered the rout, nearly all of them praising the Lumbees and mocking the Klan. Lumbee historian Adolph Dial later said, "Until the Klan thing, people didn't even know there were Lumbees." Yet within the community, most Lumbees saw it simply as self-...

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]]> Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/n/p/t/battle-of-hayes-pond-wp/dnpt-battle-of-hayes-pond-a-story-that-echoed-forward.mp3 0:06 6 full