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Lynching was the widespread occurrence of extrajudicial killings which began in the United States' 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, as 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.
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.
In Forsyth County, Georgia, in September 1912, two separate alleged attacks on white women in the Cumming area resulted in black men being accused as suspects. First, a white woman reportedly awoke to find a black man in her bedroom; then days later, a teenage white woman was beaten and raped, later dying of her injuries.
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.
Shedrick Thompson was an African-American man from Fauquier County, Virginia, who was accused of crimes against his white employers in 1932. He was later found dead, hanging from a tree. Upon discovery, his body was mutilated and burned. While an official verdict declared it a suicide, others maintained that he was lynched. He was 39.
Dan Anderson was an African-American man who was murdered in Macon, Mississippi, on May 20, 1927 at the age of 32. Anderson's father had also been lynched. Anderson was accused of killing T. C. Edwards, a white farmer from Cliftonville, Mississippi. He was arrested in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. A mob of 300 to 500 men followed him and fired more than 200 bullets into his body.
Owen Flemming or Flemings was an African-American man who was lynched by a mob near Mellwood, Arkansas, on June 8, 1927, after an altercation with a white man who attempted to force him to work on a levee during the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927.
Albert Williams was an African-American man who was lynched by a mob in Chiefland, Florida, on July 21, 1927.
Thomas Bradshaw was an African-American man who was lynched by a mob in Bailey, North Carolina, in August 1927.
Winston Pounds was an African-American man who was lynched by a mob in Wilmot, Arkansas, on August 25 or 26, 1927.
Earnest Williams was an African-American man who was lynched by a mob in Parkdale, Ashley County, Arkansas, in 1908. John R. Steelman, who wrote his PhD dissertation on "mob action in the South", listed Williams as one of the cases, and said "Earnest Williams was thrust into eternity by a band of men who were 'outraged' at him for 'using offensive language'."
Thomas Williams was an African-American man who was lynched by a mob in Memphis, Tennessee, on September 28, 1927.
Henry Choate was an African-American man who was lynched by a mob in Columbia, Tennessee, on November 13, 1927. Accused of having attacked a white girl, he was taken to the Columbia jail, from which a mob numbering hundreds of people sprang him. They killed him there, dragged him through the city behind a car, and than hanged the body from the courthouse.
Leonard Woods was an African-American man who was lynched by a mob in Pound Gap, on the border between Kentucky and Virginia, after they broke him out of jail in Whitesburg, Kentucky, on November 30, 1927. Woods was alleged to have killed the foreman of a mine, Herschel Deaton. A mob of people from Kentucky and Virginia took him from the jail and away from town and hanged him, and riddled his body with shots. The killing, which became widely publicized, was the last in a long line of extrajudicial murders in the area, and, prompted by the activism of Louis Isaac Jaffe and others, resulted in the adoption of strong anti-lynching legislation in Virginia.
Alex Smith was a 60-year-old African-American man who was lynched in Gulfport, Harrison County, Mississippi by unknown attackers on March 22, 1922. According to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary it was the 19th of 61 lynchings during 1922 in the United States.
Jim Early was a 25-year-old African-American man who was lynched in Plantersville, Grimes County, Texas, by a mob on May 17, 1922. According to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary it was the 24th of 61 lynchings during 1922 in the United States.
Robert "Bob" Collins was an African-American man who was lynched in Summit, Pike County, Mississippi by a mob of about 100 people on June 20, 1922. According to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary it was the 32nd of 61 lynchings during 1922 in the United States.
References
- ↑ "The Law's Too Slow". Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life . January 1928. p. 19. Retrieved May 23, 2021.
- ↑ "Negro Is Spirited Away After An Attempted Attack". Decatur Daily . July 7, 1927. p. 1. Retrieved May 23, 2021.
- ↑ Steelman, John R. (1928). A Study of Mob Action in the South (PhD). University of North Carolina. p. 268.
