Lynching in America / Lynching of Benjamin Hance

Marker Text: At approximately 2:00 am on June 17, 1887, a white mob lynched Benjamin Hance, a 22-year-old African American resident of St. Mary’s County, at the intersection of Newtowne Neck Road and Macintosh Run. In May of 1887, while running an errand for his employer, Mr. Hance allegedly encountered a white woman named Alice Bailey. When Ms. Bailey later reported an assault, claiming that Mr. Hance made “an improper proposal” to her, he was taken into custody and placed in this jail. During this era, accusations of assault against Black men by white women regularly aroused mob violence and lynching. On June 17, a mob of white men came to the jail intent on lynching Mr. Hance. Battering down the jail doors with axes, the mob dragged him from his cell and carried him outside the jail. A white man who lived near the jail saw the mob abducting Mr. Hance. Rather than attempting to intervene, the man asked the mob to carry out the lynching elsewhere so as not to disturb the man’s wife. Leaving the jail, the mob took Mr. Hance two miles away and hanged him from a witch hazel tree. His body was later buried in the St. Aloysius Church Old Cemetery. Local law enforcement officials failed to indict, prosecute, or hold anyone accountable for the terror lynching, despite several mob members having been identified by county residents. We remember Benjamin Hance in support of justice for all.