Willard Ginn
excursionist · active 1938
A seventeen-year-old of Pocomoke City, killed instantly of a skull fracture on the night of 15 September 1938 in the collision of two trucks carrying Black excursionists to and from an annual outing at Ocean City. A coroner's jury sat on his death and was unable to fix responsibility for it.
In the record (2)
1938 · 1938-09-15
Thirty-nine Black excursionists rode to Ocean City in the backs of two trucks on 15 September 1938, and three of them were killed when the trucks met on the Newark curve
The annual outing did run. On Thursday night 15 September 1938, at about 9.45, two trucks sideswiped on a curve a mile north of Newark on the Berlin-Snow Hill highway. 'Wright Rantz, 20, white, of Pocomoke City was driving a truck loaded with 14 Negroes northbound to Ocean City. Fred Martin, Negro, was driving another truck southbound loaded with 25 Negroes en route from Ocean City to Virginia. The trucks collided on the Newark curve spilling their human occupants in all directions.' Three were killed instantly, all of skull fractures: Louise Davis, 47, of Melfa, Virginia; Isaiah Johnson, 16, and Willard Ginn, 17, both of Pocomoke City. Twelve were injured - five taken to a Salisbury hospital and seven carried by friends across the state line to the Franktown-Nassawadox Hospital in Virginia. The Baltimore Afro-American, reporting it two days later under '3 Killed, 6 Injured in Crash Near Berlin', supplies the word the county paper does not: the trucks 'were carrying crowds to an annual outing in Ocean City'. Three coroner's juries sat. Two could not fix responsibility for the deaths of the Davis woman and Ginn; the third declared both drivers negligent, and Rantz and Martin were arrested. — 1938 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [confirmed]: INDEPENDENTLY CORROBORATED AND MATERIALLY ENLARGED by a third county newspaper the campaign did not have when the 1938 fact was written. The Worcester Democrat and the Ledger-Enterprise of 16 September 1938, printed page 1, file 0525, confirms three dead and adds: that the collision was between TWO TRUCKS, one headed north and one south, which 'sideswiped but did not overturn'; that three more were rushed to hospital and four or five injured; and that Isaiah Johnson 'was an employee at the Cohen Shoe Shop' at Pocomoke City and Willard Ginn 'resided near town'. ⚠ IT ALSO WEAKENS ONE ELEMENT: this paper does NOT name the woman from Melfa, Virginia. It says her 'name could not be learned'. The campaign holds her as Louise Davis, 47, on other authority; that identification now rests on one source and not two, and the fragment records the disagreement rather than resolving it.
The last thing the county paper had said about the Black excursion, in September 1937, was nine words: 'It is reported that there will not be a colored excursion this year.' Here is what it had become. Not a chartered train from Baltimore with a thousand tickets, as in the 1920s, but thirty-nine people from Pocomoke City and Accomack County standing in the backs of two trucks on a night road - an annual outing that the white paper reports only as a crash and the Black paper reports as an outing. Three of them did not come home, and the record now has their names.
Louise DavisIsaiah JohnsonWright RantzFred Martin
Source · checked 2026-08-11
1938 · 1938-09-16
A second account of the 1938 crash says it was two trucks, and that it could not learn the dead woman's name
The Worcester Democrat and the Ledger-Enterprise of 16 September 1938 reports the deaths on its front page: '[a col]ored woman, three others were rushed to the hospital and four or five injured. The dead are: Isaah Johnson and Willard Ginn of Pocomoke City and one colored woman from Melfa, Va., whose name could not be learned. Johnson was an employee at the Cohen Shoe Shop, this city. Ginn resided near town. Full particulars could not be learned but according to report one truck was headed north and the other south. The trucks sideswiped but did not overturn.'
Two things this adds and one it takes away. It gives Isaiah Johnson a job - the Cohen Shoe Shop at Pocomoke City - and it gives the crash its mechanism, two trucks sideswiping, neither overturning, which is how three people die and nine more go to hospital on a road home from the beach. What it takes away is her name. The county's third paper printed her death and could not be bothered to find out who she was, and the reason it gives is 'could not be learned'.
Source · checked 2026-08-11