Zachariah Harrison was a Baptist pastor. Natives of Kentucky, he and his wife Sarah (Woods) settled in Rhode Island at the end of the 19th century after moving from Indiana with their seven children. The family took up residence on Smith Street in Cranston.

In 1903, Zachariah began preaching at the Second Free Baptist Church of Cranston. Harrison and his congregation were of African descent and he put much thought into sermons regarding race relations — often mentioning the leadership of individuals such as Booker T. Washington and the ongoing horror of lynchings in the south.

Reverend Harrison’s oldest child was Maxwell Augustus Harrison.

During the fall of 1909, Maxwell, 14, was to begin ninth grade. On Sept. 13, nearly a dozen upper classman grabbed Maxwell and dragged him down into the basement of the school. With force, they pushed him to the entrance of the school’s furnace – which was lit.

Maxwell dropped into the darkness, falling before his leg struck a stone, a bone being fractured and a deep laceration gashed into his right kneecap. In great pain, he began to crawl through the dark tunnel, away from his assailants. The tunnel passed under the basement floor, and he pulled himself the distance until butting up against the grate of the burning furnace. He was stuck.

Eventually the older students somehow let him out. Maxwell was bleeding, broken and burned. He was transported to Rhode Island Hospital where doctors determined there wasn’t much hope for his survival.    

School authorities as well as the police attempted to learn the names of those who took part in the hazing. Maxwell told police that the group consisted of about a dozen older boys. Eventually, with the help of witnesses, police compiled a list of eight assailants, most of them sophomores: Sigmund Fisher, Fred Pollard and his brother Sidney Pollard, Willard Haskell, Adelbert Athens, Byron Sellew, Ernest Mattison, and Clarence Conyers. The parents of Sigmund, Adelbert and Ernest argued against the determination, stating that their sons were not present in the basement of the school at that time.

After several days in the hospital, doctors were confident that his life no longer was in danger. However, the wound became inflamed. There was great concern that gangrene was not far off and preparations were made to amputate the leg. His leg was saved as well as his life and was released from the hospital on Sept. 28. It was decided at a meeting of school authorities that the students would be suspended from classes until Jan. 3, 1910. Taking Christmas vacation into account, the guilty would miss approximately two weeks of school.

By 1917, Maxwell was employed as a porter at Ward Baking Company on Eddy Street in Providence. Six years later, his father resigned from the Second Free Baptist Church to answer a call in Brockton, and the family relocated. Maxwell, later moved to Philadelphia with his parents. After many years as a government employee, he retired from the United States Postal Service. He died in 1983.