| Lynching of Jim Taylor | |
|---|---|
| Location | Murfreesboro Road, Franklin, Tennessee, U.S. |
| Date | April 29, 1891 |
Attack type | Lynching |
| Part of a series on the |
| Nadir of American race relations |
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Jim Taylor was an African-American man who was lynched on April 30, 1891 in Franklin, Tennessee.
Jim Taylor was an African American man who lived and worked as a sharecropper on a farm owned by James Hodge, two miles from Franklin. [1] He was described as "a very large negro", who was "feared by his own race and regarded as desperate" by The Daily American , [1] and as "a dangerous character" by The Leaf-Chronicle . [2]
On April 29, 1891, a circus troupe with many African Americans was in Franklin. [1] Taylor went to Franklin and reportedly shot a circus artist named Morrellton. [2] A policeman named Charles Cook tried to arrest him, and Taylor reportedly shot him in the neck. [1] [2] Taylor was arrested. [1] He reportedly carried two guns and a knife. [1] He was taken to the Williamson County Jail in Franklin. [1]
At 10p.m., a mob entered the jail and dragged him out of his cell. [1] [2] They took him to the bridge on Murfreesboro Road (near modern-day Pinkerton Park), where they hanged him and riddled his body with bullets. [1] [2] [3] The mob, who were on horseback, left shortly after, [2] and Taylor's body was found the next morning. [1]
The lynchers were not identified. [1]
Williamson County is a county in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2010 United States Census, the population was 183,182. The county seat is Franklin. The county is named after Hugh Williamson, a North Carolina politician who signed the U.S. Constitution. Adjusted for relative cost of living, Williamson County is one of the wealthiest counties in the United States. Williamson County is part of the Nashville-Davidson - Murfreesboro - Franklin, TN Metropolitan Statistical Area.
Robertson County is a county located on the central northern border of Tennessee in the United States. As of the 2010 census, the population was 66,283. Its county seat is Springfield. The county was named for James Robertson, an explorer, founder of Nashville, and a state senator, who was often called the "Father of Middle Tennessee".
Maury County is a county located in the U.S. state of Tennessee, in the Middle Tennessee region. As of the 2010 census, the population was 80,956. Its county seat is Columbia.
Franklin is a city in, and the county seat of, Williamson County, Tennessee, United States. About 21 miles (34 km) south of Nashville, it is one of the principal cities of the Nashville metropolitan area and Middle Tennessee. As of 2019, its estimated population was 83,097, and it is the seventh-largest city in Tennessee.
Nolensville is a town in Williamson County, Tennessee. The population was 5,861 at the 2010 census. It was established in 1797 by William Nolen, a veteran of the American Revolutionary War. Located in Middle Tennessee, it is approximately twenty-two miles southeast of Nashville. The town was re-incorporated in 1996.
Cordie Cheek was a 17-year-old African-American youth who was lynched by a white mob in Maury County, Tennessee near the county seat of Columbia. After being falsely accused of raping a young white girl, Cheek was released from jail when the grand jury did not indict him, due to lack of evidence. The county magistrate and two other men from Maury County abducted Cheek from Nashville, where he was staying with relatives near Fisk University, took him back to the county, and turned him over to a lynch mob. The mob mutilated the youth and murdered him by hanging.
Joe Coe, also known as George Smith, was an African-American laborer who was lynched on October 10, 1891, in Omaha, Nebraska. Overwhelmed by a mob of one thousand at the Douglas County Courthouse, the twelve city police officers stood by without intervening. Afterward, the mayor called the lynching "the most deplorable thing that has ever happened in the history of the country."
In 1906, a young African American man named Ed Johnson 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 lynched him.
Triune is an unincorporated community in eastern Williamson County, Tennessee, approximately halfway between Franklin and Murfreesboro. The community is located along the Wilson Branch of the Harpeth River. The intersection of former local roads State Route 96 and the concurrency of U.S. Routes 31A and 41A is here. The community is located just north of these roads interchange with Interstate 840.
The lynching of Marie Thompson of Shepherdsville took place in the early morning on June 15, 1904, in Lebanon Junction, Bullitt County, Kentucky, for her killing of John Irvin, a white landowner. The day before Thompson had attempted to defend her son from being beaten by Irvin in a dispute; he ordered her off the land. As she was walking away from him, he attacked her with a knife and she killed him in self-defense with a razor. She was arrested and put in the county jail.
Samuel A. Bierfield is believed to be the first Jew lynched in the United States. Bierfield and his African-American clerk, Lawrence Bowman, were confronted in Bierfield's store in Franklin, Tennessee and fatally shot on August 15, 1868 by a group of masked men. The killers were believed to belong to a local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, which had emerged as an insurgent force in the state in 1866. Bierfield's murder was reported by both The New York Times and the Nashville Union and Dispatch.
William Burns was a 22 year old African American man who was lynched on October 6, 1907 in Cumberland, Maryland for the alleged murder of white Cumberland police officer August Baker.
Jim McIlherron was an African-American man who was tortured and executed by a lynch mob in Estill Springs, Tennessee, as part of a group lynching. It was reported by the York Daily on February 8, 1918.
On February 9, 1893, Alfred Blount, an African American and a Chattanooga native, was taken from his jail cell in the county jail and brutally beaten, stabbed, and hanged from the Walnut Street Bridge in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Blount was charged with assault of a woman by the name of Mrs. M. A. Moore. Moore, 51 and widowed, claimed she was cleaning her house when a man entered through her back door requesting food. Moore, assuming it was a neighbor of hers, invited the man in and called out to her African-American house boy Sam to bring the man some food. Upon realizing Sam's absence, Moore herself went into the kitchen to prepare food before reporting being grabbed by the arm and attacked by the man. After hitting the man with her hand, Moore fainted and laid unconscious in her house before recalling the incident to her neighbor, Mrs. DeRochement.
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.
Samuel Smith was a 15-year-old African-American youth who was lynched by a white mob, hanged and shot in Nolensville, Tennessee, on December 15, 1924. No one was ever convicted of the lynching.
David Jones was an African-American man who was lynched in Nashville, Tennessee on March 25, 1872 after being arrested as a suspect in a killing. He was mortally wounded while in jail, shot twice in the back while resisting white mob members who came to take him out; the whites pulled him into the Public Square and hanged him from a post outside the police station, with a crowd of an estimated 2,000 in attendance. The sheriff interrupted the hanging and took Jones down. Taken back to the jail, Jones died of his injuries on April 9, 1872.
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.
Jo Reed was an African American man who was lynched in Nashville, Tennessee, on April 30, 1875, where he was taken by a white mob from the county jail after being arrested for killing a police officer in a confrontation. He was hanged from a suspension bridge but, after the rope broke, Reed survived the attempted lynching, escaped via the river, and left Nashville to go West.
Three years later, Jim Taylor, a black man accused of shooting a policeman, was seized by a mob from Williamson County’s sheriff and hung from the Murfreesboro Pike bridge.