| Part of Red Summer | |
 News coverage of the lynchings in Montgomery, Alabama | |
| Date | September 29, 1919 |
|---|---|
| Location | Montgomery, Alabama, United States |
| Deaths | 3 |
Miles (or Relius) Phifer and Robert Crosky were lynched in Montgomery, Alabama for allegedly assaulting a white woman.
In August or September 1919 Miles Phifer and Robert Crosky, Army veterans, were arrested over allegations they assaulted two white women in separate incidents in Montgomery, Alabama. The Gadsden Daily Times-News reported that the two had confessed to the assaults. [1] A mob had formed and a concerned citizen notified Alabama's Governor Thomas Kilby that there might be a lynching. [2] Kilby ordered the two to be transferred to the relative safety of the prison in nearby Wetumpka. [2] On September 29, 1919, the sheriff and his deputies were transporting Phifer and Crosky when they were stopped by a white mob of about 25 masked men. [3] The deputies stood by as the men pulled the two out of the car. They were taken into the wilderness 5 miles (8.0 km) outside of town and told to run. As Phifer and Crosky sprinted away from the mob they were gunned down. Croskey was killed instantly, but Phifer lived for a few hours. [2] [4] According to some contemporary reports, both Phifer and Crosky were discharged soldiers and Phifer was still in his uniform when he was killed. [5] [1] Other (later) sources mention only Crosky as a veteran. [3]
On 2 AM on September 30, 1919, a day after the lynching of Phifer and Crosky, Willie Temple was lynched in a hospital for allegedly fatally wounding Policeman Barbaree. [5]
These lynchings were part of a period of civil unrest now known as the American Red Summer of 1919. Attacks on black communities and white oppression spread to more than three dozen cities and counties. In most cases, white mobs attacked African American neighborhoods. In some cases, black community groups resisted the attacks, especially in Chicago and Washington, D.C. Most deaths occurred in rural areas during events like the Elaine race riot in Arkansas, where an estimated 100 to 240 blacks and 5 whites were killed. Other major events of Red Summer were the Chicago race riot and Washington D.C. Race Riot, which caused 38 and 39 deaths, respectively. Both riots had many more non-fatal injuries and extensive property damage reaching up into the millions of dollars. [6]
| Date | Name | County |
|---|---|---|
| June 6, 1919 | James E. Lewis | Mobile |
| June 18, 1919 | Jim McMillan | Bibb |
| August 2, 1919 | Archie Robinson | Clarke |
| August 2, 1919 | Unnamed man | Clarke |
| September 29, 1919 | Miles Phifer | Montgomery |
| September 29, 1919 | Robert Croskey | Montgomery |
| September 30, 1919 | Willie Temple | Montgomery |
Notes
References
Thomas Erby Kilby Sr. was an American politician. He was the eighth lieutenant governor of Alabama and the 36th governor of Alabama.
Red Summer was a period in mid-1919 during which white supremacist terrorism and racial riots occurred in more than three dozen cities across the United States, and in one rural county in Arkansas. The term "Red Summer" was coined by civil rights activist and author James Weldon Johnson, who had been employed as a field secretary by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1916. In 1919, he organized peaceful protests against the racial violence.
Jim McMillan was lynched in Bibb County, Alabama on June 18, 1919.
Berry Washington was a 72-year-old black man who was lynched in Milan, Georgia, in 1919. He was in jail after killing a white man who was attacking two young girls. He was taken from jail and lynched by a mob.
The Morgan County, West Virginia race riot of 1919 was caused by big business using African-American strikebreakers against striking white workers in Morgan County, West Virginia.
The 1919 Coatesville call to arms was when the black community of Coatesville, Pennsylvania formed a large armed group to prevent a rumoured lynching. Only later when the armed group had surrounded the jail to prevent the lynching did they learn that there was no suspect and no white lynch mob.
The Laurens County, Georgia race riot was an attack on the black community by white mobs in August 1919. In the Haynes' report, as summarized in the New York Times, it is called the Ocmulgee, Georgia race riot.
The Whatley, Alabama race riot of 1919 was a riot, gun battle between the local Black and White community on August 1, 1919.
After young African-American men volunteered to fight against the Central Powers, during World War I, many of them returned home but instead of being rewarded for their military service, they were subjected to discrimination, racism and lynchings by the citizens and the government. Labor shortages in essential industries caused a massive migration of southern African-Americans to northern cities leading to a wide-spread emergency of segregation in the north and the regeneration of the Ku Klux Klan. For many African-American veterans, as well as the majority of the African-Americans in the United States, the times which followed the war were fraught with challenges similar to those they faced overseas. Discrimination and segregation were at the forefront of everyday life, but most prevalent in schools, public revenues, and housing. Although members of different races who had fought in World War I believed that military service was a price which was worth paying in exchange for equal citizenship, this was not the case for African-Americans. The decades which followed World War I included blatant acts of racism and nationally recognized events which conveyed American society's portrayal of African-Americans as 2nd class citizens. Although the United States had just won The Great War in 1918, the national fight for equal rights was just beginning.
Paul Jones was lynched on November 2, 1919, after being accused of attacking a fifty-year-old white woman in Macon, Georgia.
On Sunday, November 16, 1919, four African-Americans were lynched in Moberly, Missouri. Three were able to escape but one was shot to death.
The Hurtsboro “race riot” was an exchange of gunfire near Hurtsboro, Alabama in the final days of 1920 that was described in newspapers across the country as a deadly shoot-out between whites and blacks. In the end, a riot was avoided, no one was killed and the suspect was released without charges.
Chilton Jennings was lynched on July 24, 1919, after being accused of attacking a white woman, Mrs. Virgie Haggard in Gilmer, Texas.
African Americans Irving "Ervie" Arthur (1903–1920) and his brother Herman Arthur (1892–1920), a World War I veteran, were lynched—burned alive—at the Lamar County Fairgrounds in Paris, Texas, on July 6, 1920. The event extended and amplified regional and national flashpoints for justice. It happened just a year after the racial violence of 1919's Red Summer. The family was attacked by some of the town's white population and were forced to flee to the north, mostly settling in Chicago. This and other attacks on Black Americans encouraged civil rights groups to fight against lynchings in America. Media outlets reported on the 100-year-old anniversary but the memorial events were scaled down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The lynching of Edward"Red" Roach was the extrajudicial killing of a 25-year-old Black man by a mob of White men in Roxboro, North Carolina for allegedly assaulting the 13-year-old daughter of popular White tobacco farmer Edward Chambers. Later, Nello Teer, Roach's employer, wrote to The Herald-Sun in Durham decrying the lynching as a “ghastly mistake” because Roach was at work when the alleged attack on Chambers occurred. No one was ever brought to justice for the lynching. A memorial service was held in Durham in remembrance of "Ed" Roach in 2019.
Father and son Alonzo and James D. Green were innocent African-Americans lynched near Round Oak and Wayside, Jones County, Georgia in retaliation for the murder of popular white farmer Silas Hardin Turner on July 4, 1915. A third man, William Bostick was also lynched on this day. None of those killed received a trial.
On September 18, 1921, 16-year-old Eugene Daniel was lynched for walking into a white girl's bedroom.
An 18-year-old African American named William Turner was lynched on November 18, 1921, in Helena, Arkansas, for an alleged assault on a 15-year-old white girl. Two years earlier hundreds of African-Americans were killed during the Elaine Race Riot in Hoop Spur, a nearby community also in Phillips County, Arkansas.
Willie Temple was an African American man who was lynched by a white mob on September 30, 1919, in Montgomery, Alabama.