Charles Thurber was a black man lynched in Grand Forks, North Dakota, on October 24, 1882. [1] A plaque was installed in 2020 to memorialize Thurber, [2] whose lynching took place on the St. Paul, Minneapolis and Manitoba Railway (later becoming the Great Northern Railway) bridge over the Red River between Grand Forks, North Dakota and East Grand Forks, Minnesota.
Thurber was accused of raping two white women, one the wife of a railroad worker and the other described as a "Norwegian servant girl". According to one of the illustrated North Dakota Mysteries and Oddities books, at least one of Thurber's accusers may have recanted her story.
The lynching was described in the Daily Herald (which is now the Grand Forks Herald ) in articles that are quite shocking to modern readers.
For example, at one point the headline writer used poetry, as follows:
Quiet and Peace Entirely Restored
and with an Investigation no One will be Bored
Public Opinion Carefully Sifted
and Every One Rejoices that the Negro was lifted
No Investigation Required
and None Need Fear for Themselves in the Trouble being mired
Thurber, the Negro Rapest [ sic ] Fell off the Bridge and was Hurt
while Mr. Thomas COVERED HIM UP WITH RED RIVER DIRT.
Racial expletives were used in headlines. According to the existing historical accounts, a mob of citizens broke down the doors of the jail to abduct Thurber before any trial could take place. Some law enforcement members fought to prevent Thurber from being removed from the jail, but were reportedly overpowered. Rival mobs put two nooses on Thurber's neck and engaged in a tug-of-war there in the street. Thurber may have already been dead when he was lynched from the middle of a railroad bridge over the Red River. According to the Grand Forks Herald newspaper account of October 24, 1882, Thurber admitted to the crime before he was lynched.
A description of Thurber's burial comes from the Daily Herald.
"Mr O.M. Thomas drove the body, incased [ sic ] in a plain coffin, to the cemetery. No mourners or even spectators followed. It was decided that no inquest would be held. No one demanded it and nobody wanted it. Directly or indirectly, almost the entire town was implicated. There being not the slightest pretension to secrecy, no investigation as to the means of this death was necessary. It is understood the he fell of [ sic ] the bridge and was hurt."
"Yesterday public comment over the lynching of Thurber completely subsided, and while it was the universal theme of conversation, yet it was mainly good humored comment and recitals of the amusing episodes omitted from the reports."
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.
The Sheyenne River is one of the major tributaries of the Red River of the North, meandering 591 miles (951 km) across eastern North Dakota, United States.
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."
Lynching was the widespread occurrence of extrajudicial killings which began in the United States' pre–Civil War South in the 1830s, slowed during the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, and continued until 1981. Although the victims of lynchings were members of various ethnicities, after roughly 4 million enslaved African Americans were emancipated, they became the primary targets of white Southerners. Lynchings in the U.S. reached their height from the 1890s to the 1920s, and they primarily victimized ethnic minorities. Most of the lynchings occurred in the American South, as the majority of African Americans lived there, but racially motivated lynchings also occurred in the Midwest and border states. In 1891, the largest single mass lynching in American history was perpetrated in New Orleans against Italian immigrants.
The Springfield race riot of 1908 consisted of events of mass racial violence committed against African Americans by a mob of about 5,000 white Americans and European immigrants in Springfield, Illinois, between August 14 and 16, 1908. Two black men had been arrested as suspects in a rape, and attempted rape and murder. The alleged victims were two young white women and the father of one of them. When a mob seeking to lynch the men discovered the sheriff had transferred them out of the city, the whites furiously spread out to attack black neighborhoods, murdered black citizens on the streets, and destroyed black businesses and homes. The state militia was called out to quell the rioting.
The following is a list of media in Grand Forks, North Dakota, United States:
The recorded history of Grand Forks in the U.S. state of North Dakota, began with the trade between Native Americans and French fur trappers during the 19th century. About 60 buildings or other historic sites in Grand Forks survive and are recognized among the National Register of Historic Places listings in Grand Forks County.
Anthony Crawford was an African American man who was killed by a lynch mob in Abbeville, South Carolina on October 21, 1916.
Laura and L. D. Nelson were an African-American mother and son who were lynched on May 25, 1911, near Okemah, Okfuskee County, Oklahoma. They had been seized from their cells in the Okemah county jail the night before by a group of up to 40 white men, reportedly including Charley Guthrie, father of the folk singer Woody Guthrie. The Associated Press reported that Laura was raped. She and L. D. were then hanged from a bridge over the North Canadian River. According to one source, Laura had a baby with her who survived the attack.
Ell Persons was a black man who was lynched on 22 May 1917, after he was accused of having raped and decapitated a 15-year-old white girl, Antoinette Rappel, in Memphis, Tennessee, United States. He was arrested and was awaiting trial when he was captured by a lynch party, who burned him alive and scattered his remains around town, throwing his head at a group of African Americans. A large crowd attended his lynching, which had the atmosphere of a carnival. No one was charged as a result of the lynching, which was described as one of the most vicious in American history, but it did play a part in the foundation of the Memphis chapter of the NAACP.
The lynching of Francis McIntosh was the killing of a free Black man, a boatman, by a white mob after he was arrested in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 28, 1836. He had fatally stabbed one policeman and injured a second.
On Tuesday, November 12, 1914, John Evans, a black man, was lynched in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States, by a mob of 1,500 white men, women and children. Evans was accused of the murder of Edward Sherman, a white real estate developer, and the attack of Sherman's wife, Mary. After word of the attack spread, and Mary Sherman claimed her attackers were "two negroes," a citywide search ensued. Suspicions immediately led to John Evans. Two days after the murder, a posse consisting of some of the city's most prominent and well-respected members stormed the St. Petersburg jail, threw a noose around Evans' neck and marched him to his death. He was never given a fair trial. Evans was hanged from a light post on the corner of Ninth Street South and Second Avenue. At first, he kept himself alive by wrapping his legs around the light pole. An unidentified white woman in a nearby automobile ended his struggle with a single bullet. Though the shot was fatal, the rest of the crowd began shooting at Evans' dangling body until their ammunition was depleted.
In the early hours of 3 June 1893, a black day-laborer named Samuel J. Bush was forcibly taken from the Macon County, Illinois, jail and lynched. Mr. Bush stood accused of raping Minnie Cameron Vest, a white woman, who lived in the nearby town of Mount Zion.
Ephraim Grizzard and Henry Grizzard were African-American brothers who were lynched in Middle Tennessee in April 1892 as suspects in the assaults on two white sisters. Henry Grizzard was hanged by a white mob on April 24 near the house of the young women in Goodlettsville, Tennessee.
Nevlin Porter and Johnson Spencer were African-American men who were lynched in Starkville, Mississippi May 5, 1879 for the alleged burning of a barn.
Chilton Jennings was lynched on July 24, 1919, after being accused of attacking a white woman, Mrs. Virgie Haggard in Gilmer, Texas.
Oscar Mack was an African-American World War I veteran. An attempt was made to lynch Oscar Mack in Kissimmee, Osceola County, Florida. According to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary it was the 39th of 61 lynchings during 1922 in the United States. The New Britain Herald reported that he was lynched in Lake Jennie Jewell, in Orange County.
The lynching of Charles Bannon took place in the US state of North Dakota on January 29, 1931. The self-confessed killer of a family of six, Bannon was taken from the jail in Schafer and hanged from a bridge, becoming the last victim of a lynching in the state.
The lynching of Richard Puryear took place on March 15, 1894, at Stroudsburg, Monroe County, in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. A mostly white mob seized and hanged Richard Puryear, a Black railroad worker accused of murdering a white storekeeper, after he escaped from prison. A grand jury investigated the lynching, but no members of the mob faced criminal charges or convictions in Puryear's murder.