George Johnson, Squire Taylor, and Charles Davis, were three Black men who were killed in a spectacle lynching in 1871 in Charlestown, Indiana. They were memorialized in 2022.
A white mob lynched George Johnson, Squire Taylor, and Charles Davis, all Black men, in Charlestown, Clark County, Indiana, in 1871. [1] The three men were accused of killing the family of Cyprus Park, a farmer who lived near Henryville, Indiana. A neighbor near the Parks family believed that he was also a target but managed to keep the assailants out of his home. The neighbor believed that the assailants were white. Even so, George Johnson, a Black man, was arrested on suspicion of committing the murders and was tortured until he confessed. He also gave out the names of two other Black men, Squire Taylor, and Charles Davis. These men were then arrested. The trial followed quite quickly. The grand jury declared the men not guilty based on the lack of evidence, but the men remained in custody and were sent to a Charlestown jail. [1]
Soon after arrival, a white mob gathered and took the three men from the jail. The mob then hanged all three men and tortured Squire Taylor before he was killed. The guilt of the men in question was viewed as highly dubious by some at the time. Information about this spectacle lynching was released only a year later in a pamphlet titled, “Murder and Mob Law in Indiana,” by James Hiatt. The author decried the lack of proof of the Black men's guilt and acknowledged the overwhelming evidence of their innocence. [2] No one was charged or arrested for the murder of these men even though the family came forward with names of suspects and filed a law suit against the sheriff involved. The actions of the white mob led the Indiana governor at the time, Conrad Baker, to call for the suppression of illegal organizations. Referring to the Enforcement Act of 1870, adopted during Reconstruction, Baker proposed that the U.S. Federal government could be asked to intervene to stop the actions of mobs that terrorized Black people. The Indiana government, however, did not follow through on that proposal and mob violence continued. [3]
Information about the murdered men is not available in the public historical record otherwise. In Indiana, between 1877 and 1950, there were at least eighteen Black people lynched. [4]
On the 16th of February, 2022, the Indiana Senate officially recognized the innocence of George Johnson, Squire Taylor, and Charles Davis in Senate Resolution 36. [5] [6] Senator Chris Garten has since expressed interest in installing a historical marker to commemorate the event, although one has yet to be created.
Mass racial violence in the United States, includes Ethnic conflict and race riots, can include such events as:
Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, punish a convicted transgressor, or intimidate people. It can also be an extreme form of informal group social control, and it is often conducted with the display of a public spectacle for maximum intimidation. Instances of lynchings and similar mob violence can be found in every society.
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."
The M25 Three were Raphael Rowe, Michael George Davis, and Randolph Egbert Johnson, who were jailed for life at the Old Bailey in March 1990 after being convicted for murder and burglary. The name was taken from the location of the crimes, which were committed around the M25, London's orbital motorway, during the early hours of 16 December 1988. The original trial took place between January and February 1990, resulting in all three being convicted of the murder of Peter Hurburgh, causing grievous bodily harm with intent to Timothy Napier and several robberies. Each was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder and given substantial sentences for the other offences. The convictions were overturned in July 2000. All three men have consistently maintained their innocence.
Lynching in the United States was the widespread occurrence of extrajudicial killings which began in the pre–Civil War South in the 1830s and ended during the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s. 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 victimised ethnic minorities. Most of the lynchings occurred in the American South because the majority of African Americans lived there, but racially motivated lynchings also occurred in the Midwest and border states.
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.
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.
White caps were groups involved in whitecapping who were operating in southern Indiana in the late 19th century. They engaged in vigilante justice and lynchings and in modern times are often viewed as engaging in terrorism. They became common in the state following the American Civil War and lasted until the turn of the 20th century. White caps were especially active in Crawford and neighboring counties in the late 1880s. Several members of the Reno Gang were lynched in 1868, causing an international incident. Some of the members had been extradited to the United States from Canada and were supposed to be under federal protection. Lynchings continued against other criminals, but when two possibly innocent men were killed in Corydon in 1889, Indiana responded by cracking down on the white cap vigilante groups beginning in the administration of Isaac P. Gray.
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.
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.
The Perry massacre was a racially motivated conflict in Perry, Florida, in December, 1922. Whites killed four black men, including burning Charles Wright at the stake in a lynching, and destroyed several buildings in the black community of Perry after the murder of Ruby Hendry, a white female schoolteacher.
George Armwood was lynched in Princess Anne, Maryland, on October 18, 1933. His murder was the last recorded lynching in Maryland.
Roosevelt Townes and Robert McDaniels, two black men, were lynched on April 13, 1937, in Duck Hill, Mississippi by a white mob after being labeled as the murderers of a white storekeeper. They had only been legally accused of the crime a few minutes before they were kidnapped from the courthouse, chained to trees, and tortured with a blow torch. Following the torture, McDaniels was shot to death and Townes was burned alive.
George Taylor was an African-American man who was lynched on November 5, 1918, after he was accused of raping a white woman named Ruby Rogers in her home near Rolesville, North Carolina, United States, about 20 mi (32 km) northeast of Raleigh. Described in the press as a "genuine old-fashioned lynching", it is the only known lynching in Wake County, North Carolina. The lynching was commemorated on its anniversary, 2018.
Elmore County is a county located in the east-central portion of the U.S. state of Alabama. Throughout its history, there have been many lynchings in the county including on July 2, 1901, when a local mob lynched Robert White. In a strange turn of events, a local farmer, George White confessed in court to the killing and named five other local men as killers. Three men were convicted in the killing and sentenced to ten years in prison. On 9 June 1902, they were pardoned by Governor Jelks.
The lynching of F. W. Stewart occurred shortly after midnight on November 7, 1898, about a mile outside of Lacon, Illinois. Stewart had been accused of the assault of a miner's daughter in Toluca. About one hundred miners formed a mob and broke into the Marshall County jail to retrieve Stewart, who they hanged.
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.
Jesse Thomas was a 23-year-old, African-American man who was murdered in Waco, McLennan County, Texas by Sam Harris on May 26, 1922. A large mob then seized the body from the undertaker and burnt it in Waco's public square. The lynching of Jesse Thomas was the 10th lynching in 20-days in Texas and according to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary it was the 30th of 61 lynchings during 1922 in the United States.
William Keemer was the victim of a racial terror spectacle lynching in 1875 in Greenfield, Indiana. Keemer, a Black man, was dragged from his jail cell in Hancock County, Indiana on June 25, 1875 by a white mob from Hancock, Shelby, and Rush counties. Keemer was hung at the Hancock County fairgrounds and over 1,000 people traveled to view the body. Keemer was arrested on June 24 for an alleged sexual assault against a white women in Carthage, Indiana. No trial was held for the alleged crime and William Keemer remains innocent. In 2021 a historical marker commemorating the anti-Black violence committed against Keemer was approved by the Indiana Historical Bureau.