Tarred and feathered

A dentist's story and the death of Ike Starns

PAW BILL TOLD THIS ONE every Sunday after church. My great-grandfather, W. O. “Paw Bill” Courtney, would settle into his chair and walk us through the night a Hammond dentist got stripped bare, painted with creosote, and covered in duck feathers on a public street.

My grandmother, “Maw Telliua,” would shake her head and say he was making half of it up. I didn’t care either way. It was the best story I’d ever heard.

Turns out Paw Bill was underselling it.

Years later, digging through newspaper archives from 1930, I pulled headline after headline off the front pages of papers in New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

One read “Hammond dentist tarred and feathered.” Another, “Starns admits tarring, labels dentist homewrecker.” There was “Crowds fill tar and feather courtroom” and even “U.S. court refuses to hear tar and feather appeal.”

The story had …