Near this spot, on June 5, 1902, a white mob lynched a Black man named Wiley Gynn. Mr. Gynn, whose surname was also reported as “Guynn” or Gwynn”, was a 28-year-old Black husband, father, and boarding house proprietor in Bondtown. Earlier that day, a white girl claimed that she had…
On September 18, 1902, a white mob lynched Alonzo Tucker, a Black man in Coos Bay, then called Marshfield. The day prior, Mr. Tucker had been arrested and placed in jail after being accused of assaulting a white woman near the 7th Street Marshfield Bridge. As news of his arrest…
Hazen was named for William Babcock Hazen, who served under General Sherman in his “March to the Sea.” The town, established in 1903 to house laborers working on the Newlands Irrigation Project south of here, included hotels, saloons, brothels, churches, and schools. In 1905 the first train came through on…
On June 11, 1902, a white mob of more than fifty men abducted two African American children, ages 13 and 11. named Harrison and James Gillespie from the Rowan County jail and lynched them in front of a crowd of over 400 people. The two boys had been arrested and…
Between 1885 and 1921, white mobs terrorized and lynched at least six Black people in Chatham County, creating a legacy of violence, intimidation, and injustice. On September 28, 1885, a white mob in Pittsboro lynched four Black people—Jerry Finch and his wife, Harriet, John Pattishall, and Lee Tyson—following the unsolved…
On October 10, 1908, a mob of white people brutally shot, tortured, and lynched Frank Johnson, Dee Dawkins, and William Fielder near Hickory, Mississippi. On October 8, a Black sharecropper named Shep Jones had a disagreement about his work schedule with his white employer. The white planter assaulted Mr. Jones,…