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.
Duck Hill is a town in Montgomery County, Mississippi, United States. The population was 619 at the 2020 census, down from 732 in 2010.
The Omaha Race Riot occurred in Omaha, Nebraska, September 28–29, 1919. The race riot resulted in the lynching of Will Brown, a black civilian; the death of two white rioters; the injuries of many Omaha Police Department officers and civilians, including the attempted hanging of Mayor Edward Parsons Smith; and a public rampage by thousands of white rioters who set fire to the Douglas County Courthouse in downtown Omaha. It followed more than 20 race riots that occurred in major industrial cities and certain rural areas of the United States during the Red Summer of 1919.
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 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 in American history was perpetrated in New Orleans against Italian immigrants.
Jim McMillan was lynched in Bibb County, Alabama on June 18, 1919.
Austin Callaway, also known as Austin Brown, was a young African-American man who was taken from jail by a group of six white men and lynched on September 8, 1940, in LaGrange, Georgia. The day before, Callaway had been arrested as a suspect in an assault of a white woman. The gang carried out extrajudicial punishment and prevented the youth from ever receiving a trial. They shot him numerous times, fatally wounding him and leaving him for dead. Found by a motorist, Callaway was taken to a hospital, where he died of his wounds.
On April 13, 1937, Roosevelt Townes and Robert McDaniels, two black men, were lynched 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 in 2018.
The Jenkins County riot of 1919 took place on Sunday, April 13, 1919, a black man killed two white police officers in an altercation during a traffic stop. In response, a white mob burned several buildings in the black community and killed four black men.
Miles Phifer and Robert Crosky were lynched in Montgomery, Alabama for allegedly assaulting a white woman.
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.
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 and grandfather had also been lynched.
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.
Hullen Owens was an African-American man who was lynched in Texarkana, Bowie County, Texas by a white mob on May 19, 1922. According to a 1926 report by the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, this was the 26th of 61 lynchings during 1922 in the United States.
Jesse Thornton was a 26-year old African-American man who was lynched in the town of Luverne, Alabama, on June 22, 1940. Thornton was lynched for allegedly refusing to address a white man as "Mister". He was shot to death, and his body was thrown into the Patsaliga River. The Equal Justice Initiative documented that the white man Thornton had apparently offended by his Jim Crow infraction was a police officer.
John Henry Harrison was a 38-year-old African-American man who was lynched in Malvern, Hot Spring County, Arkansas, by masked men on February 2, 1922. According to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary it was the 10th of 61 lynchings in America and 1 of 5 lynchings in the State of Arkansas during 1922.
Hale Infirmary was a hospital in Montgomery, Alabama, for African American citizens during a time of segregation. It was the first such hospital in the city; founded in 1890 by Dr. Cornelius Nathaniel Dorsette, it was in operation until 1958.
Cornelius Nathaniel Dorsette was an American physician who is often called the first African American doctor licensed in the state of Alabama. He was also the founder of Hale Infirmary, the first hospital in Montgomery for African American patients, staffed by African American doctors and nurses.
