Contemporary reports say there were at least 30 white witnesses, including the local sheriff, who saw a white man covered with blood leaving the scene. In spite of a public effort by prosecutor E.C. Barlow to obtain testimony, no witnesses would come forward. The three men who had been arrested went free. Smith apparently had attended meetings of RCNL, probably the largest civil rights organization in the state. He was also a personal friend of RCNL president T. R. M. Howard of Mound Bayou.