Booker T. Spicely 1909-1944
Black U.S. Army soldier shot nearby in 1944 for resisting Jim Crow laws on a bus. Aftermath of killing helped revitalize North Carolina’s NAACP….
The Lynching of Frazier Baker
In 1898 a building here was the scene of a lynching that sparked outrage across the nation. Frazier Baker, an African American who had recently been postmaster of Effingham, was appointed postmaster of Lake City in 1897. Whites who resented Baker harassed him, even burning the post office in an…
Site of Lynching George Marshall Clark 1861
Milwaukee’s only recorded lynching occurred on this block on September 8, 1861. African-American residents George Marshall Clark and James Shelton were imprisoned on September 7 after a fight the previous evening during which Shelton fatally stabbed Darby Carney, owner of a popular Third Ward saloon. After Carney died, a mob…
City Jail: A Site of Racial Terror in Alexandria. Lynching of Benjamin Thomas, 1899
A “Public Prison” for the Enslaved. Long before a lynch mob abducted Benjamin Thomas from the Alexandria jail, this site was one of racial oppression, particularly due to its connection to slavery. Within a decade of Congress authorizing $10,000 to build this jail, the American Anti-Slavery Society featured it in…
The Lynching of Wiley Gynn
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…
The Lynching of Dave Hurst
On November 14, 1920, a large white mob lynched a 25-year-old Black coal miner named Dave Hurst. Authorities had arrested Mr. Hurst two days earlier after a white woman reported that she had been assaulted by a Black man. During this era, the deep racial hostility that permeated Southern society…