In 1839 the Town of Leesburg acquired from Benjamin Shreve Sr. a half-acre tract of land on the turnpike just east of the town limits. Its purpose was to serve as a public cemetery for indigent citizens. The town’s more prosperous residents were usually buried in church cemeteries. As both…
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Sicilian Immigration to Louisiana. From the 1870s till 1920, approximately 3,000 Sicilians per year immigrated to America via New Orleans. They worked on plantations, railroads, and docks; soon becoming entrepreneurs in importing. shipping. farming, and retail. A New Orleanian of Sicilian descent, Joseph P. Macheca, ran a shipping company and…
On June 19, 1895, a white mob in Abbeville, Mississippi, brutally lynched William Chandler, tying him to a telegraph pole in front of the railroad depot and riddling his body with bullets. Mr. Chandler, a Black man from Alabama who had only been in town for a few days, was…
On June 27, 1911, hundreds of white people formed a mob that brutally lynched a 35-year-old Black man named John Jordan in Cleveland. The mob shot and beat Mr. Jordan to death following a prolonged chase after a white farmer accused Mr. Jordan and two Black companions of stealing cherries…
In 1930, over 100 white men and boys broke into Oconee County Jail to lynch Allen Green, a prominent local African American. Born in 1879, Green lived a few blocks east of here with his wife, Corrie Green. On April 20, he was arrested on likely false charges of raping…