In June of 1917 a strike broke out in the aftermath the deadly Speculator Mine disaster where 164 lives were lost. Frank Little, on of the “toughest, most courageous and impulsive” leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World came to Butte to support the strike and draw miners into…
On June 26, 1919, John Hartfield, an African American, was lynched in Ellisville allegedly for raping his White girlfriend. After being apprehended by the county sheriff, he was turned over to a mob. The lynching was announced in advance by newspapers, and thousands of spectators watched as Hartfield was hanged…
On April 5, 1918, German immigrant Robert Prager was hanged by a mob at this site. Prager’s lynching was the high-water mark of the anti-immigrant and anti-German hysteria that gripped the nation during World War I. Persecution in the guise of patriotism was especially severe in the southern Illinois coal…
Near this site on May 19, 1918, twenty-one year old Mary Turner, eight months pregnant, was burned, mutilated, and shot to death by a local mob after publicly denouncing her husband’s lynching the previous day. In the days immediately following the murder of a white planter by a black employee…
On September 20, 1916, Henry White, a 24-year-old African American was lynched by a large white mob in the city of Durham in Walker County. Georgia. Mr. White had come to Durham from Chattanooga, Tennessee and worked as a miner in the Pittsburg-Durham coal mines. Earlier that morning. it was…
On September 10, 1912, a 24-year-old Black man named Rob Edwards was lynched and hung in downtown Cumming, Georgia. During this era, deep racial hostility burdened Black people with presumptions of guilt, often resulting in accusations that were unfounded and unreliable. Mr. Edwards was one of several Black men arrested…