The Key West race riot occurred in 1897, after a 19-year-old black man was accused of raping a white woman in the city. While there were attempts to lynch Sylvanus Johnson, the alleged perpetrator, an all-black group defended him at his jail. They killed a white man in the process, fomenting a race riot. Johnson was executed after a 21-minute deliberation by an all-white jury.
Key West, Florida, had been established for about a year when Sylvanus Johnson, a 19-year-old black man, was accused of raping Livington Atwell, a white woman. [1] He had allegedly attacked her while she and three of her friends were collecting flowers in June 1897. [2] He was jailed after Atwell identified him as her rapist. [1] The night of the accusation, a mob of some 25 to 30 men tried to storm the jail and lynch Johnson. [1] They failed, as the jail keeper did not turn him over; [1] the jail keeper and his associates had drawn their guns on the white mob who attempted to access Johnson. [3]
C.B. Pendleton, the owner and editor of two newspapers in the city, urged a lynching at the court hearing for Johnson: [3] He had asked whether there were enough white men to lynch him. [1] This was a public call, and the Miami Metropolis said it was intended to warn black residents of the city of a lynching. [1] The Miami Metropolis also said it allowed them time to organize and prevent it; had Pendleton not said anything, they argued, he could have met no resistance. [1] After Pendleton's outburst, a black resident called to lynch Pendleton, and a group swarmed the editor. [3] He drew his guns and fled in a carriage. [3] Soon, another group of black residents of the town surrounded the jail, promised to shoot any white person who tried to take Johnson, [3] and threatened to burn down Key West. [4] They shot William Gardner, a white man, that night. [3]
The sheriff thereafter formed a mob of some 40 people, and asked the governor to root out the black group. [3] The governor, William D. Bloxham, in turn asked for assistance from president William McKinley and his secretary of war. [upper-alpha 1] [3] With his group formed, the sheriff had prevented much disturbance throughout the town; his shooting of a black resident may have influenced this. [3] Ultimately, there was no revenge by the white residents of the town against the black residents. [4]
Newspapers around the United States blamed the violence on Johnson, [3] although the Afro-American Sentinel from Omaha, Nebraska, praised the black community's vigorous defense of him. [6]
An all-white jury was empaneled for Johnson's criminal case, and after 21 minutes of deliberation, found him guilty. [3] He was ordered to be hanged, and he was executed on 21 September 1897 as thousands of people watched. [3]
The Rosewood massacre was a racially motivated massacre of black people and the destruction of a black town that took place during the first week of January 1923 in rural Levy County, Florida. At least six black people and two white people were killed, though eyewitness accounts suggested a higher death toll of 27 to 150. The town of Rosewood was destroyed in what contemporary news reports characterized as a race riot. Florida had an especially high number of lynchings of black men in the years before the massacre, including a well-publicized incident in December 1922.
Mack Charles Parker was an African-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."
Jesse Washington was a seventeen-year-old African American farmhand who was lynched in the county seat of Waco, Texas, on May 15, 1916, in what became a well-known example of racist lynching. Washington was convicted of raping and murdering Lucy Fryer, the wife of his white employer in rural Robinson, Texas. He was chained by his neck and dragged out of the county court by observers. He was then paraded through the street, all while being stabbed and beaten, before being held down and castrated. He was then lynched in front of Waco's city hall.
The Robert Charles riots of July 24–27, 1900 in New Orleans, Louisiana were sparked after African-American laborer Robert Charles fatally shot a white police officer during an altercation and escaped arrest. A large manhunt for him ensued, and a white mob started rioting, attacking blacks throughout the city. The manhunt for Charles began on Monday, July 23, 1900, and ended when Charles was killed on Friday, July 27, shot by a special police volunteer. The mob shot him hundreds more times, and beat the body.
On May 16, 1918, a plantation owner was murdered, prompting a manhunt which resulted in a series of lynchings in May 1918 in southern Georgia, United States. White people killed at least 13 black people during the next two weeks. Among those killed were Hayes and Mary Turner. Hayes was killed on May 18, and the next day, his pregnant wife Mary was strung up by her feet, doused with gasoline and oil then set on fire. Mary's unborn child was cut from her abdomen and stomped to death. Her body was then repeatedly shot. No one was ever convicted of her lynching.
On March 19, 1906, Ed Johnson, a young African American man, was murdered by a lynch mob in his home town of Chattanooga, Tennessee. He had been sentenced to death for the rape of Nevada Taylor, but Justice John Marshall Harlan of the United States Supreme Court had issued a stay of execution. To prevent delay or avoidance of execution, a mob broke into the jail where Johnson was held, and abducted and lynched him from the Walnut Street Bridge.
Anthony Crawford was an African American man who was killed by a lynch mob in Abbeville, South Carolina on October 21, 1916.
The Longview race riot was a series of violent incidents in Longview, Texas, between July 10 and July 12, 1919, when whites attacked black areas of town, killed one black man, and burned down several properties, including the houses of a black teacher and a doctor. It was one of the many race riots in 1919 in the United States during what became known as Red Summer, a period after World War I known for numerous riots occurring mostly in urban areas.
The Ocoee massacre was a mass racial violence event which saw a white mob attack numerous African American residents in the northern parts of Ocoee, Florida, a town located in Orange County near Orlando. The massacre took place on November 2, 1920, the day of the U.S. presidential election.
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.
Raymond Arthur Byrd was an African-American farmhand who was lynched by a mob in Wythe County, Virginia on August 15, 1926.
The lynching of the Frenches of Warsaw took place in Warsaw, Gallatin County, Kentucky on May 3, 1876, between 1 am and 2 am on a Wednesday morning. Benjamin and Mollie French, African Americans, were lynched by a white mob for the murder of another African American, which was unusual for this period. Lake Jones was an elderly black man who had faithfully served a white family named Howard, both before and after his emancipation from slavery. The Frenches were accused of poisoning Lake Jones with arsenic and intending to steal his money.
The lynching of Marie Thompson of Shepherdsville took place in the early morning on June 15, 1904, in Lebanon Junction, Bullitt County, Kentucky, for her killing of John Irvin, a white landowner. The day before Thompson had attempted to defend her son from being beaten by Irvin in a dispute; he ordered her off the land. As she was walking away from him, he attacked her with a knife and she killed him in self-defense with a razor. She was arrested and put in the county jail.
George Armwood was lynched in Princess Anne, Maryland, on October 18, 1933. His murder was the last recorded lynching in Maryland.
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.
Samuel "Mingo Jack" Johnson was an African-American man falsely accused of rape. He was brutally beaten and hanged by a mob of white men in Eatontown, New Jersey.
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.
La Matanza and the Hora de Sangre was a period of anti-Mexican violence in Texas, including lynchings and massacres, between 1910 and 1920 in the midst of tensions between the United States and Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. This violence was committed by Anglo-Texan vigilantes, and law enforcement, such as the Texas Rangers, during operations against bandit raids known as the Bandit Wars. The violence and denial of civil liberties during this period was justified by racism. Ranger violence reached its peak from 1915 to 1919, in response to increasing conflict, initially because of the Plan de San Diego, by Mexican and Tejano insurgents to take Texas. This period was referred to as the Hora de Sangre by Mexicans in South Texas, many of whom fled to Mexico to escape the violence. At least 300 Mexican Americans were killed in Texas during the 1910s, with total estimates of ranging from hundreds to thousands killed. At least 100 Mexican Americans were lynched in the 1910s, many in Texas. Many murders were concealed and went unreported, with some in South Texas, suspected by Rangers of supporting rebels, being placed on blacklists and often "disappearing".
John Carter was an African-American man who was murdered in Little Rock, Arkansas, on May 4, 1927. Grabbed by a mob after another Black man had been apprehended for the alleged murder of a white girl, Carter was hanged from a telephone pole, shot, dragged through the streets, and then burned in the center of the city's Black part of town with materials that a white crowd of perhaps 5,000 people had looted from nearby stores and businesses.
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.