Wallace State professor tells murder tale on Halloween Eve

Beyond Productions of Australia has announced that Robert S. Davis, senior professor of History at Wallace State Hanceville, will appear on a special episode of Deadly Women on the Investigation Discovery Channel on Oct. 30, at 9 p.m. He will help to narrate a reenactment of the murder of Narcissa “Sis” Fowler by Kath Sothern at a dance in rural Pickens County, Georgia in 1876. The murderer initially escaped. The famous mountain tracker Walter Web Findly and his posse caught up to Kath and her family in North Carolina and brought her to trial.
This homicide caused a scandal that rocked the nation. The Atlanta Constitution’s famous writer Henry W. Grady championed the cause of Sothern, claiming that she defended her marriage by killing her husband’s lover.  He argued that had it been a case of a husband so protecting his marriage, the case would not have even gone to trial in the South. The issues of women and homicide but especially women killing women will be the subject of this episode.
Henry Grady’s campaign was successful. Although sentenced to hang, Sothern only made the trip to the gallows in folk legends; the national outcry resulted in her sentence commuted to eight years in prison, of which she served only a few years of the sentence, and as a cook and a house cleaner, with her husband and growing number of children living with her.
Pickens County officials, however, argued that the murder was actually only a matter of revenge over gossip and dismissed claims of any affair. Grady would achieve national fame for his causes including through his “New South” speech that was inspired by a visit he made to Pickens County during the Kath Sothern/Kate Southern affair.
Professor Davis has published articles about Kath Sothern’s murder of Sis Fowler. He also teaches genealogy and history classes at Wallace State and helps to maintain a nationally famous family and local history collection that he largely created. His scholarship for more than 1,000 publications, including more than forty books, has received national recognition. For information on his continuing education classes in family history research contact mandi.perkins@wallacestate.edu.
For more information about Wallace State, visit www.wallacestate.edu.