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b'ESPECIALLY IN THE LATE 1800s, the Oregon frontier was no stranger to acts of judicial lynching \\u2013 where the local legal system was corrupted to provide cover for murder. What\\u2019s more unusual, though, was an 1852 event that amounted to judicial cattle rustling. \\n\\nThe cattle that the Benton County courts rustled belonged to a woman named Letitia Carson, and she was the widow of a recently naturalized Irishman named David Carson \\u2014 or, rather, she would have been David\\u2019s widow, if the two of them had been allowed to marry. But they weren\\u2019t, because Letitia Carson was black, and a former slave \\u2014 born in Kentucky in the late 1810s. \\n\\nThe other factor that makes this episode of judicial rustling unusual is that Letitia took the thieves to court \\u2014 and won. Twice. (Corvallis, Benton County; 1850s, 1860s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/1912b.letitia-carson-fought-racist-neighbor-in-court.html)'