Leavenworth is the county seat and largest city of Leavenworth County, Kansas, United States and is part of the Kansas City metropolitan area. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 37,351. It is located on the west bank of the Missouri River. The site of Fort Leavenworth, built in 1827, the city became known in American history for its role as a key supply base in the settlement of the American West. During the American Civil War, many volunteers joined the Union Army from Leavenworth. The city has been notable as the location of several prisons, particularly the United States Disciplinary Barracks and United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth.
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 (11) in American history was perpetrated in New Orleans against Italian immigrants.
Charles Spalding Thomas was a Confederate soldier and later United States senator from Colorado. Born in Darien, Georgia, he attended private schools in Georgia and Connecticut, and served briefly in the Confederate Army.
Henry Smith was an African-American youth who was lynched in Paris, Texas. Smith allegedly confessed to murdering the three-year-old daughter of a law enforcement officer who had allegedly beaten him during an arrest. Smith fled, but was recaptured after a nationwide manhunt. He was then returned to Paris, where he was turned over to a mob and burned at the stake. His lynching was covered by The New York Times and attracted national publicity.
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.
Jim McIlherron was an African-American man who was tortured and executed by a lynch mob on February 12, 1918, in Estill Springs, Tennessee. McIlherron was lynched in retaliation for shooting and killing two white men after a fight broke out.
Fred Rochelle was an African-American teenager from Bartow, Florida, who was lynched and burned to death on May 29, 1901, following the alleged rape and murder of a white woman, Rena Smith Taggart, the previous day. He was said to have been seen near where Taggart's body was found. Newspapers misreported the 16-year-old boy as "35 years of age". A mob of over 100 men as well as bloodhounds from Mulberry and Pebble was assembled to search for him but a local paper mentioned a possible lynching before any evidence was recovered or he was charged.
William "Froggie" James, an African-American man, was lynched and his dead body mutilated on November 11, 1909 by a mob in Cairo, Illinois, after he was charged with the rape and murder of 23-year-old shop clerk Anna Pelley.
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.
John Hartfield was a black man who was lynched in Ellisville, Mississippi in 1919 for allegedly having a white girlfriend. The murder was announced a day in advance in major newspapers, a crowd of as many as 10,000 watched while Hartfield was hanged, shot, and burned. Pieces of his corpse were chopped off and sold as souvenirs.
The lynching of Paul Reed and Will Cato occurred in Statesboro, Georgia on August 16, 1904. Five members of a white farm family, the Hodges, had been murdered and their house burned to hide the crime. Paul Reed and Will Cato, who were African-American, were tried and convicted for the murders. Despite militia having been brought in from Savannah to protect them, the two men were taken by a mob from the courthouse immediately after their trials, chained to a tree stump, and burned. In the immediate aftermath, four more African-Americans were shot, three of them dying, and others were flogged.
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.
Jim and Mark Fox were two African-American brothers, who were murdered in Louisville, Mississippi, in 1927. On June 13, 1927, a mob of 1,000 white men from Louisville lynched two African-Americans, Jim and Mark Fox. In the aftermath of the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, the Fox brothers were working in or for a Red Cross camp, and got into an argument with a white sawmill superintendent, allegedly killing him. The argument apparently concerned work hours. The two brothers were seized by a crowd and paraded through Louisville; then they were tied to a telephone pole, doused in gasoline, and burned alive. An onlooker who tried to help them was pulled away by the crowd.
The lynching of George Hughes, which led to what is called the Sherman Riot, took place in Sherman, Texas, in 1930. An African-American man accused of rape and who was tried in court died on May 9 when the Grayson County Courthouse was set on fire by a White mob, who subsequently burned and looted local Black-owned businesses. Martial law was declared on May 10, but by that time many of Sherman's Black-owned businesses had been burnt to the ground. Thirty-nine people were arrested, eight of whom were charged, and later, a grand jury indicted 14 men, none for lynching. By October 1931, one man received a short prison term for arson and inciting a riot. The outbreak of violence was followed by two more lynchings in Texas, one in Oklahoma, and several lynching attempts.
On March 15, 1901, an African American woman named Ballie Crutchfield was lynched by a white mob in Rome, Tennessee. The mob had tried to murder her brother, earlier that night, but was unsuccessful and took vengeance on his sister, whom they bound, shot, and threw in a creek.
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.
Charles Atkins was a 15-year-old African-American boy who was lynched in Davisboro, Washington County, Georgia by a mob on May 18, 1922. According to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary it was the 25th of 61 lynchings during 1922 in the United States.
The Seminole burning was the lynching by live burning of two Seminole youth, Lincoln McGeisey and Palmer Sampson, near Maud, Oklahoma, on January 8, 1898.
L. Q. Ivy was a seventeen-year-old African-American male who was accused of raping a White woman in 1925 in Rocky Ford, Mississippi. He was tortured and burned to death in 1925 by a lynch mob of White people.
