Lynching of Horace Maples

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Lynching of Horace Maples
Location Huntsville, Alabama
DateSeptember 7, 1904

Horace Maples was an African-American man who was lynched by a mob of approximately 2,000 people in Huntsville, Alabama, on September 7, 1904. [1] Maples had been accused of murder and was being held in the county jail when it was set on fire by the crowd. He jumped from a second story window in the jail, but was seized by the crowd and hanged on a tree on the courthouse lawn. [2] [3] Maples' body was then shot full of bullets by people in the crowd. [4]

Contents

A state court grand jury returned indictments against some of those who actively participated in the lynching, but these were overturned. [5] Later, however, federal judge Thomas Goode Jones, a former Confederate, ruled that the lynchers had violated federal laws. [6]

Memorial

A memorial in Maples' memory and his death was established at the Madison County Courthouse on September 7, 2020. [7]

References

  1. ↑ "ALABAMA MOB HANGS NEGRO.; Burns Jail to Get at Him -- Vote Taken Before Hanging". The New York Times. September 8, 1904. Retrieved May 1, 2021.
  2. ↑ "LYNCHED BY A MOB Alabama Negro Taken From Jail and Hanged to Tree". The Press Democrat. No. 213. September 8, 1904. Retrieved May 1, 2021.
  3. ↑ Brent J. Aucoin, Thomas Goode Jones: Race, Politics, and Justice in the New South, University Alabama Press. 2016
  4. ↑ Thirty years of lynching in the United States, 1889-1918. Compiled and published by the NAACP April 1919, p. 15
  5. ↑ Record, James (1978). A Dream Come True: The Story of Madison County and Incidentally of Alabama and the United States, Volume II (PDF). Huntsville, Alabama: James Record. pp. 115–116.
  6. ↑ Brent Aucoin, A Rift in the Clouds: Race and the Southern Federal Judiciary, 1900-1910, University of Arkansas Press. 2007
  7. ↑ "Madison County memorial for 116th year Anniversary of Horace Maples lynching". WAFF 48. September 10, 2020. Retrieved May 1, 2021.
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