Thomas Washington, an African American man, was lynched on 23 March 1896 for allegedly attempting to assault the young daughter of a prominent white citizen. A boy found Washington’s body hanging from a tree about 1/8 mile southwest of here. A coroner’s jury did not identify the killers. The body,…
On a lamppost at this corner on April 23, 1897, Black Alexandria teenager Joseph H. McCoy was lynched. McCoy’s white employer, Richard Lacy, alleged that McCoy had sexually assaulted his daughter. Similar accusations were routinely used against Black males to ensure domination and provoke racial terror within the African American…
Close to midnight on Tuesday, August 8, 1899, Benjamin Thomas, a 16-year-old Black Alexandrian, was lynched from a lamppost on this corner. Earlier, white rioters attacked the City Jail on N. St. Asaph Street, where they seized and dragged Thomas for a half-mile on a cobblestone street, hitting him with…
Racial terror lynching plagued Texas and devastated African American communities for decades. On August 14, 1894, Travis County was the site of a triple lynching when a white mob seized a black woman and two black men from a small jail about thirty miles from Austin. According to news reports,…
A mob estimated at 3,000 people gathered near this spot on the night of July 22, 1893, with the intent of breaking into the Shelby County Jail and seizing Lee Walker, a black prisoner accused of attempting to rape a young white woman. Four days earlier, Mollie McCadden had reported…
In the spring of 1892, one of the most violent public events in Nashville’s history occurred at this site. On April 24, 1892, two black men were accused of assaulting two white women near Goodlettsville. Henry Grizzard and Ephraim Grizzard, brothers, were arrested on suspicion, along with three other black…