| Part of Jim Crow Era | |
 Moores Bridge, the location of the Lynching of Eugene Daniel. Submerged after the creation of Jordan Lake. | |
| Date | September 18, 1921 |
|---|---|
| Location | Pittsboro, Chatham County, North Carolina |
| Participants | A mob 50 white strong from Chatham County, North Carolina |
| Deaths | 1 |
On September 18, 1921, 16-year-old Eugene Daniel was lynched for walking into a white girl's bedroom.
On Friday, September 16, 1921, five 5 miles (8.0 km) east of Pittsboro, North Carolina, black 16-year-old Eugene Daniel wanted to borrow some twine. He walked into a neighbor′s house and startled a white girl, Gertrude, the daughter of homeowner Walter Stone. [1] Eugene Daniel quickly ran away but on Saturday, September 17, 1921, a bloodhound was acquired from Raeford, North Carolina. The hound tracked Daniel down and he was arrested. That night a mob formed and over-powered jailer W.H. Taylor and seized him from the jail where he was being held. Near the Moore Springs Bridge on the old Raleigh road, he was lynched using an auto chain and the body was riddled with bullets. [2] [1] The dangling body became a tourist attraction for white residents and on Monday, September 19, 1921, 1,000 people trekked to see it.
In the 1970s, the area was submerged with water from the creation of Jordan Lake.[ citation needed ]
Two years earlier there were several incidents of civil unrest in the so-called American Red Summer of 1919. Terrorist attacks on black communities and white oppression in over 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 DC. Most deaths occurred in rural areas during events like the Elaine Race Riot in Arkansas, where an estimated 100 to 240 black people and 5 white people were killed. Also in 1919 were the Chicago Race Riot and Washington D.C. race riot which killed 38 and 39 people respectively. Both had many more non-fatal injuries and extensive property damage reaching into the millions of dollars. [3]
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened in Montgomery, Alabama, on April 26, 2018, in a setting of 6 acres (2.4 ha). Featured among other things, is a sculpture by Kwame Akoto-Bamfo of a mother with a chain around her neck and an infant in her arms. On a hill overlooking the sculpture is the Memorial Corridor which displays 805 hanging steel rectangles, each representing the counties in the United States where a documented lynching took place and, for each county, the names of those lynched. At the memorial there are six lynching victims in Chatham County between the years 1885 and 1921:
Notes
References
In the broader context of racism in the United States, mass racial violence in the United States consists of ethnic conflicts and race riots, along with such events as:
Chatham County is a county located in the Piedmont area of the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is also the location of the geographic center of North Carolina, northwest of Sanford. As of the 2020 census, the population was 76,285. Its county seat is Pittsboro.
Pittsboro is a town in Chatham County, North Carolina, United States. The population was 3,743 at the 2010 census and 4,537 at the 2020 census. It is the county seat of Chatham County.
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 Macon, Mississippi, race riot took place on June 7, 1919, in Macon, Mississippi. White members who were angry that black people were organizing to attain better work conditions beat, whipped and then forced them into exile.
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 Newberry 1919 lynching attempt was the attempted lynching of Elisha Harper, Newberry, South Carolina on July 24, 1919. Harper was sent to jail for insulting a 14-year-old girl.
The Darby 1919 lynching attempt was the attempted lynching of Samuel Gorman in Darby, Pennsylvania on July 23, 1919. Samuel Gorman, a 17-year-old black boy was sent to jail for the alleged murder of William E. Taylor.
The Wilmington, Delaware race riot of 1919 was a violent racial riot between white and black residents of Wilmington, Delaware on November 13, 1919.
The Whatley, Alabama race riot of 1919 was a riot, gun battle between the local Black and White community on August 1, 1919.
Miles Phifer and Robert Crosky were lynched in Montgomery, Alabama for allegedly assaulting a white woman.
Paul Jones was lynched on November 2, 1919, after being accused of attacking a fifty-year-old white woman in Macon, Georgia.
Chilton Jennings was lynched on July 24, 1919, after being accused of attacking a white woman, Mrs. Virgie Haggard in Gilmer, Texas.
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.
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.
Bayner Blackwell was an African-American man who was lynched in Swansboro, Onslow County, North Carolina by a group of men on August 6, 1922. According to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary it was the 44th of 61 lynchings during 1922 in the United States.