A detailed account comes from William Pickens, then a journalist and an assistant field secretary for the executive secretary of the NAACP. Pickens is the only source for some details on Lowry; his age, for example, being otherwise unknown except for Pickens's estimate of "forty years or more". He and his wife Callie are not listed in the 14th United States census, despite having moved to Arkansas in 1918 from Mississippi. O. T. Craig was a planter in Mississippi County, Arkansas, first name not given in most contemporary accounts but revealed by the same census records to be Osben T. Craig, aged 68 at the time; with 62-year-old wife Mary, children Elizabeth (28), Richard (24), Margret (21), and two further sons. Craig had a reputation for being ornery: he mistreated his Black tenants and exploited them. Lowry was a proud, tall man; he was over six feet tall and, according to later testimony from another one of Craig's tenants, Mrs. Lucy Oliver, "he didn't take nothing off of nobody". He had attained the highest possible level within his Masonic order, a rank given to those of "outstanding character and leadership qualities".
