The Lynching of Raymond Byrd

Marker Text: On the night of August 15, 1926, a mob of rowdy Wythe County citizens forced their way into the Wythe County jail that stood on this site until 1928. Overpowering the county jailer, the mob breached the cell in which a black man, Raymond Arthur Byrd, was incarcerated. The mob pulled Byrd from his cell into the hallway, where he was brutally beaten and shot. Next, they tied his lifeless body behind a waiting automobile and dragged it approximately six-hundred yards. It was then put inside the automobile and taken a distance west of town to be hung from a tree and mutilated. The brutality of the lynching of Raymond Byrd resulted in public pressure on Virginia officials to pass legislation that would outlaw lynching on a statewide basis. On March 14, 1928, Virginia Governor Harry F. Byrd Sr. signed into law the strictest anti-lynching measure in the nation, the first to make lynching a state crime.