Sheriff Walker pleaded with news reporters covering the violence to send a message to the Alachua County Sheriff P. G. Ramsey to send assistance. Carloads of men came from Gainesville to assist Walker; many of them had probably participated in the Klan rally earlier in the week. W. H. Pillsbury tried desperately to keep black workers in the Sumner mill, and worked with his assistant, a man named Johnson, to dissuade the white workers from joining others using extra-legal violence. Armed guards sent by Sheriff Walker turned away black people who emerged from the swamps and tried to go home. W. H. Pillsbury's wife secretly helped smuggle people out of the area. Several white men declined to join the mobs, including the town barber who also refused to lend his gun to anyone. He said he did not want his "hands wet with blood".