Lynching in America / The Courthouse Lynching of Theo Calloway

Marker Text: On March 29, 1888, a mob of at least 200 white men lynched Theo Calloway, a 24-year-old Black man, near this courthouse in Lowndes County, Alabama. Mr. Calloway was accused of killing a white man and insisted that he had acted in self defense, but he never had the chance to stand trial. During this era, Black people were regularly denied fair trials and due process, and seized from jails and police custody while armed officers made no effort to protect them. Aided by the local sheriff, the white mob abducted Mr. Calloway from jail just hours before he was scheduled to appear in court, hanged him from a chinaberry tree on the courthouse lawn, and riddled his body with bullets. Theo Calloway, one of at least eleven children, was from nearby Sandy Ridge. His parents, Johnson and Fanny Calloway, learned of their son’s lynching when they arrived to attend his hearing and instead had to retrieve his mangled corpse. For months afterward, Lowndes County Black residents protested Mr. Calloway’s lynching, but local newspaper headlines applauded the mob’s act: “Taken from Jail in the Approved Style, and Judicial Expenses Saved.” With support from the governor, the same local law enforcement and state officials who had failed to prevent the illegal mob murder violently confronted and arrested dozens of Black people for demanding justice for Mr. Calloway. No one was ever punished for his lynching.