Lynching in America / The Lynching of Rueben Sims

Marker Text: On April 19, 1904, Reuben Sims, a Black man, was lynched by a white mob in Little River, Alabama. Beginning on April 18, the mob terrorized local Black residents in a manhunt for Black men after a white man was found dead. Mr. Sims was seized and whipped three times to torture him into saying he was involved. Then, the mob hanged him and riddled his body with bullets. The sheriff of Baldwin County reported that he knew the identity of some of the lynchers but that no one in the local white community would cooperate with an investigation. He made no arrests. The local circuit judge had the power to hold a special session to investigate the lynching, and people from outside the community called for a court hearing at the Baldwin County court here in Bay Minette. However, the judge announced that in his opinion no special session was necessary. During this era, lynch mobs regularly used torture to elicit false confessions from their victims. These alleged confessions were were indications of fear, not complicity, and victims of racial terror lynching were denied their constitutional rights to due process. Local officials empowered to hold lynch mobs accountable instead granted them impunity, sending a message that Black people had no protection against racial terror violence. Reuben Sims was one of at least eight Black people lynched in Alabama between April 6 and September 7, 1904. No one was ever held accountable for lynching him.