Charlotte Harris was an African-American woman who was lynched by a white mob on March 6, 1878, near Harrisonburg, in Rockingham County, Virginia. Harris was hanged after being accused of burning a barn belonging to a wealthy white family. Her body was left to hang from a tree for two days in full view of the roadway. The lynching of Charlotte Harris is the only recorded lynching of a Black woman in Virginia's history. The lynching attracted national attention. While local newspapers characterized Harris as a "bad woman", a number of newspapers elsewhere denounced the crime as "disgusting" and an "atrocity" that reflected poorly on the Commonwealth of Virginia. [1]
On Thursday, February 28th, 1878, a barn burned down that belonged to Henry E. Sipe, a white man living a couple miles east of McGaheysville in eastern Rockingham County. A 17-year-old teenage Black boy, Jim Ergenbright (or Arbegast), was arrested after being accused of arson. Charlotte Harris was later named by Ergenbright as the instigator. On March 6, Harris was arrested and placed under guard awaiting trial. At 11 pm on the same day, two men in blackface armed with cocked revolvers appeared at the jail and demanded the jailers hand over Harris. They were joined by a larger mob of white men in blackface. The mob dragged Harris four hundred yards up the road and hanged her from a blackjack oak tree. [2]
In September, 2020, a historical marker honoring Charlotte Harris was unveiled at Court Square in Harrisonburg, Virginia. The marker was placed by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. [3]
The historical marker reads:
About a dozen disguised people took Charlotte Harris from the custody of jailers in eastern Rockingham County on the night of 6 March 1878 and hanged her from a tree approximately 13 miles southeast of here. This is the only documented lynching of an African American woman in Virginia, and it received nationwide attention. A grand jury that met here failed to identify any of the lynchers. Harris had been accused of inciting a young African American man to burn the barn of a white farmer. This man was later acquitted on all charges. More than 4,000 lynchings took place in the United States between 1877 and 1950; more than 100 people, primarily African American men, were lynched in Virginia. [4]
Local leaders spoke during the unveiling of the historical marker, including the Mayor of Harrisonburg. [5]
Harris County is a county located in the west-central portion of the U.S. state of Georgia; its western border with the state of Alabama is formed by the Chattahoochee River. As of the 2020 census, the population was 34,668. The county seat is Hamilton. The largest city in the county is Pine Mountain, a resort town that is home to the Franklin D. Roosevelt State Park. Harris County was created on December 14, 1827, and named for Charles Harris, a Georgia judge and attorney.
Sam Hose was an African American man who was tortured and murdered by a white lynch mob in Coweta County, Georgia, after being accused of rape.
McGaheysville is a Census-designated place located in Rockingham County, in the U.S. state of Virginia. It is located along U.S. Route 33 between Penn Laird and Elkton, and sits at the base of the Massanutten.
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 Hazel "Hayes" Turner and his wife, 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.
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.
Matthew Williams was a black man lynched by a white mob in Salisbury, Maryland on December 4, 1931.
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.
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.
The Newberry Six lynchings took place in Newberry, Alachua County, Florida, on August 18, 1916.
Shedrick Thompson was an African-American man from Fauquier County, Virginia, who was accused of crimes against his white employers in 1932. He was later found dead, hanging from a tree. Upon discovery, his body was mutilated and burned. While an official verdict declared it a suicide, others maintained that he was lynched. He was 39.
Winston Pounds was an African-American man who was lynched by a mob in Wilmot, Arkansas, on August 25 or 26, 1927.
Leonard Woods was an African-American man who was lynched by a mob in Pound Gap, on the border between Kentucky and Virginia, after they broke him out of jail in Whitesburg, Kentucky, on November 30, 1927. Woods was alleged to have killed the foreman of a mine, Herschel Deaton. A mob of people from Kentucky and Virginia took him from the jail and away from town and hanged him, and riddled his body with shots. The killing, which became widely publicized, was the last in a long line of extrajudicial murders in the area, and, prompted by the activism of Louis Isaac Jaffe and others, resulted in the adoption of strong anti-lynching legislation in Virginia.
Aaron, Anthony, and Randall were three enslaved Black men who died of racial terror. Aaron and Anthony were lynched in 1856 in Washington County, Arkansas, after being accused of a murder and released by the court, one because he was proven and the other for lack of evidence. Randall was hanged for that crime. An oral history recounts that the white man who had been killed, the enslaver James Boone, had sexually assaulted a Black woman, who killed him in self-defense, and that the three men were implicated by Boone's family.
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.
On October 11, 1878, Jim Good, Jeff Hopkins, Ed Warner, William Chambers, and Dan Harris, Sr. were lynched in Posey County, Indiana, near the town of Mount Vernon. These men, who were allegedly connected to the robbery of a brothel, were killed by a white mob who broke into the jail where they were being held. Two other men, Dan Harris, Jr. and John Harris, were also lynched in the days leading up to October 11, in connection with the same alleged offense. This racial terror lynching is the largest reported lynching in Indiana's history.
William Andrews was an African American laborer who was lynched by a white mob in Princess Anne, Maryland on June 9, 1897. Andrews, then 17, was tried, convicted, and hanged all in one day after being accused of assaulting Mrs. Benjamin T. Kelley.
Orion Anderson (1875–1889) was a 14-year-old African American who was shot then hanged, on November 8, 1889, in Leesburg, Virginia, by a white mob. His murder was the second of three recorded lynchings in Loudoun County, Virginia, between 1880 and 1902. On Juneteenth 2019, a historical marker was placed at the site of the old rail station where he was killed.