On May 31 to June 1, 1921, a white mob attacked the prosperous Black neighborhood of Greenwood in Tulsa, resulting in the deaths of at least 36 Black Tulsans, the destruction of 36 city blocks, and the displacement of over 10,000 Black people. On May 31, Dick Rowland, a 19-year-old…
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…
An African American steelworker, Walker was burned to death by a mob near here on August 13, 1911. He was accused of killing Edgar Rice, a white security guard and a former borough policeman. Fifteen local men and teenage boys were indicted for their involvement in Walker’s death but were…
Custer County, named in memory of General George Armstrong Custer, was organized July 27, 1877. Frontiersmen and pioneer ranchers had been living in the area since 1872. Earlier, soldiers from Fort McPherson and settlers from the Platte River counties had regularly made hunting expeditions here, for its river valleys were…
In the early hours of October 10, 1891, a mob of white people from Omaha and the surrounding counties gathered at 18th and Farnam Streets to lynch George “Joe Coe” Smith, a 20-year-old Black man. On October 8, local newspapers falsely reported that a white girl died after being assaulted…
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…