Spencer County is a county located in the U.S. state of Indiana. As of the 2020 census, the population was 19,810. The county seat is Rockport. Despite not being in the Owensboro Metropolitan Area, the entire riverfront of the city of Owensboro, Kentucky borders the southern tip of the county.
Posey County is the southernmost, southwesternmost, and westernmost county in the U.S. state of Indiana. Its southern border is formed by the Ohio River, and its western border by the Wabash River, a tributary to the Ohio. As of 2020, the population was 25,222. The county seat is Mount Vernon. Posey County is part of the Evansville, Indiana metropolitan statistical area. The Ports of Indiana-Mount Vernon, on the Ohio River, is the seventh-largest inland port complex in the nation. Mechanization of dock technology has altered the number of workers at the port, but Posey County is still the seventh-largest internal port in the United States, based on the tons of materials handled. Grain from the Midwest is among the products shipped.
The Omaha Race Riot occurred in Omaha, Nebraska, September 28–29, 1919. The race riot resulted in the lynching of Will Brown, a black civilian; the death of two white rioters; the injuries of many Omaha Police Department officers and civilians, including the attempted hanging of Mayor Edward Parsons Smith; and a public rampage by thousands of white rioters who set fire to the Douglas County Courthouse in downtown Omaha. It followed more than 20 race riots that occurred in major industrial cities and certain rural areas of the United States during the Red Summer of 1919.
Mack Charles Parker was a Black American victim of lynching in the United States. He had been accused of raping a pregnant white woman in northern Pearl River County, Mississippi. Three days before he was to stand trial, Parker was kidnapped from his jail cell in the Pearl River County Courthouse by a mob, beaten and shot. His body was found in the Pearl River, 20 miles west of Poplarville, 10 days later. Following an investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the men who killed him were released. Despite confessions, no one was ever indicted for the killing. Historian Howard Smead called the killing the "last classic lynching in America."
The Douglas County Courthouse is located at 1701 Farnam Street in Omaha, Nebraska, United States. Built in 1912, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979. Notable events at the courthouse include two lynchings and the city's first sit-in during the Civil Rights Movement. Five years after it was opened, the building was almost destroyed by mob violence in the Omaha Race Riot of 1919.
White caps were groups involved in the whitecapping movement who were operating in southern Indiana in the late 19th century. They engaged in vigilante justice and lynchings, with modern viewpoints describing their actions as domestic terrorism. They became common in the state following the American Civil War and lasted until the turn of the 20th century. White caps were especially active in Crawford and neighboring counties in the late 1880s. Several members of the Reno Gang were lynched in 1868, causing an international incident. Some of the members had been extradited to the United States from Canada and were supposed to be under federal protection. Lynchings continued against other criminals, but when two possibly innocent men were killed in Corydon in 1889, Indiana responded by cracking down on the white cap vigilante groups, beginning in the administration of Isaac P. Gray.
Claude Neal was a 23-year-old African-American farmhand who was arrested in Jackson County, Florida, on October 19, 1934, for allegedly raping and killing Lola Cannady, a 19-year-old white woman missing since the preceding night. Circumstantial evidence was collected against him, but nothing directly linked him to the crime. When the news got out about his arrest, white lynch mobs began to form. In order to keep Neal safe, County Sheriff Flake Chambliss moved him between multiple jails, including the county jail at Brewton, Alabama, 100 miles (160 km) away. But a lynch mob of about 100 white men from Jackson County heard where he was, and brought him back to Jackson County.
John Cecil Jones (1915–1946) was an honorably-discharged World War II corporal and veteran who was tortured and lynched near Minden, in Webster Parish, Louisiana by a mob in 1946. His 17-year-old cousin Albert Harris, Jr. was tortured and left for dead alongside Jones. This was the only known post-World War II lynching to occur in Louisiana, and it involved multiple well-known local individuals, politicians, and a cover-up by multiple law enforcement entities.
Amos Miller was a 23-year-old African-American man who was lynched from the balcony of the Williamson County Courthouse in Franklin, Tennessee, on August 10, 1888.
Jo Reed was an African American man who was lynched in Nashville, Tennessee, on April 30, 1875, where he was taken by a white mob from the county jail after being arrested for killing a police officer in a confrontation. He was hanged from a suspension bridge but, after the rope broke, Reed survived the attempted lynching, escaped via the river, and left Nashville to go West.
James Harvey and Joe Jordan were two African-American men who were lynched on July 1, 1922, in Liberty County, Georgia, United States. They were seized by a mob of about 50 people and hanged while being transported by police from Wayne County to a jail in Savannah. Investigations by the NAACP showed that the police involved were complicit in their abduction by the mob. Twenty-two men were later indicted for the lynching, with four convicted.
In the early hours of December 12, 1880, a white mob in Clay County, Indiana lynched George Scott, an African American man. Scott had fled after being accused of a crime in nearby Eaglesfield, Indiana, and was captured near Indianapolis and brought to the Clay County jail in Brazil, Indiana. Rumors swirled that a mob might form, but the local Sheriff, James Lankford, paid them no heed. However, the man left in charge of the jail, ex-Sheriff Jacob Baumunk, took the precaution of giving the keys to Sheriff Lankford, who would not be on-site at the jail, after locking up. Sometime between one and three in the morning on Sunday, December 12, a mob of over 100 men, masked, descended on the jail and demanded that Baumunk give them the keys. After informing the mob that he did not have the keys, he was told to “retire to his room.”
The Danville race riot occurred on July 25, 1903, in Danville, Illinois, when a mob sought to lynch a Black man who had been arrested. On their way to county jail, an altercation occurred that led to the death of a rioter and the subsequent lynching of another Black man. At least two other Black residents were also assaulted. The rioters failed to overtake the police stationed at the jail and the Illinois National Guard restored order the next day.
A mob of white Vigo County, Indiana, residents lynched George Ward, a black man, on February 26, 1901 in Terre Haute, Indiana, for the suspected murder of a white woman. An example of a spectacle lynching, the event was public in nature and drew a crowd of over 1,000 white participants. Ward was dragged from a jail cell in broad daylight, struck in the back of the head with a sledgehammer, hanged from a bridge, and burned. His toes and the hobnails from his boots were collected as souvenirs. A grand jury was convened but no one was ever charged with the murder of Ward. It is the only known lynching in Vigo County. The lynching was memorialized 120 years later with a historical marker and ceremony.
John Henry Harrison was a 38-year-old African-American man who was lynched in Malvern, Hot Spring County, Arkansas, by masked men on February 2, 1922. According to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary it was the 10th of 61 lynchings in America and 1 of 5 lynchings in the State of Arkansas during 1922.
William Keemer was the victim of a racial terror spectacle lynching in 1875 in Greenfield, Indiana. Keemer, a Black man, was dragged from his jail cell in Hancock County, Indiana on June 25, 1875 by a white mob from Hancock, Shelby, and Rush counties. Keemer was hung at the Hancock County fairgrounds and over 1,000 people traveled to view the body. Keemer was arrested on June 24 for an alleged sexual assault against a white women in Carthage, Indiana. No trial was held for the alleged crime and William Keemer remains innocent. In 2021 a historical marker commemorating the anti-Black violence committed against Keemer was approved by the Indiana Historical Bureau.
Bud Rowland and Jim Henderson, two Black men, were lynched in Rockport, Indiana on December 16, 1900. The following day, Joe Holly was lynched in Boonville, Indiana for the same alleged crime.
Allen Brooks was a black American man who was lynched by a mob on March 3, 1910, in Dallas, Texas. Brooks, in his sixties, had been accused of raping a young white girl, and on the day he was set to face trial at the Dallas County Courthouse, a large mob pulled him by rope out of a second-story window at the courthouse, dragged him to Elks Arch, and hanged him from a telephone pole.
Eli Ladd was a Black victim of a racial terror lynching that took place on February 7, 1890, in Blountsville, Indiana. Ladd was living on his family farm in Mooreland at the time of his death and was employed as a Barber. A small group of white men chased Ladd while firing over fifty rounds of gunshots at him. Five men were arrested and three were convicted and served brief two-year sentences in the Indiana State Prison.
