Edward Ward Carmack (November 5, 1858November 9, 1908) was an attorney, newspaperman, and political figure who served as a U.S. Senator from Tennessee from 1901 to 1907. Following his political service, and after an unsuccessful run for Governor of Tennessee, he became editor of the one-year-old Nashville Tennessean. He was shot to death on November 9, 1908, over a feud precipitated by Duncan Brown Cooper for his editorial comments in the paper. Early life Carmack was born in Sumner County, Tennessee. He attended The Webb School, then at Culleoka, Tennessee. He studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1878 and began practicing in Columbia, Tennessee. He served as Columbia city attorney in 1881, and was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives in 1884. Carmack joined the staff of the Nashville Democrat in 1889, later becoming editor-in-chief of the Nashville American when the two papers merged. He later (1892) served as editor of the Memphis Commercial, now The Commercial Appeal. Relationship with Ida B. Wells Throughout his career, Carmack was known to use his newspapers to attack rivals. During Carmack's tenure with the Appeal, his editorials began an interesting dialogue with another famous Tennessee journalist, Ida B. Wells. Wells, known as the "Mother of the Civil Rights Movement", was also not one to withhold her opinions and spoke out about the plight of African Americans in the post-Reconstruction era in the South. Memphis in the 1890s was a hotbed of racial tension, and lynching crimes were commonplace. Wells launched an anti-lynching campaign in her newspaper, Memphis Free Speech and Headlight. The Free Speech and Headlight received national attention in 1892 for its coverage of the so-called Curve Riot in Memphis. The Curve Riot was not in fact a riot, it was an attack on the People's Grocery Store by a group of undercover white police serving a warrant on the black-owned business. Will Barret, the store's white competitor, had convinced a local court that the People's Grocery was a nuisance. The court ordered the owners arrested. Fearing an attack, supporters of the People's Grocery armed themselves to defend the store. In the ensuing melee, three deputies were wounded. Crying "race riot," other armed whites joined the police and captured over thirty African Americans, including three of the store's owners: Tom Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Will Stewart. A mob later seized the three from the jail and lynched them.