Lynching in America / Reconstruction-Era Lynchings in Gainesville

Marker Text: The era of Reconstruction following the Civil War opened with great promise in Gainesville but soon gave way to racial terror, unparalleled violence, and racial oppression. White mobs lynched at least eight Black people during this period: Harry Franklin 1868; Mr. Stephens 1868; an Unnamed Person 1870; Christopher Cummings 1870; Henry Washington 1871; Alexander Morris 1871; Sandy Hacock 1871 and Eli in 1874. After Emancipation, Black people made up a majority of the population in Gainesville and opened businesses, churches, and organized political engagement. They advocated for public education, land ownership, and the right to vote. White people hoping to maintain the racial hierarchy that existed during enslavement attacked and lynched Black people for asserting their rights, leaving plantations, participating in politics, working toward economic independence, violating white social customs, being accused of crimes, or for sheer racial terror that was random and arbitrary. In 1874, a whitemob set fire to the local jail to lynch a black man named Eli by burning him to death. This type of violence was accommodated by courts, law enforcement, and white officials who removed African Americans from juries, seized Black-owned land, and suppressed Black voting rights, while ignoring or even supporting white mobs who terrorized Black communities. Racial violence continued to terrorize the Black community for decades.