On July 15, 1888, a mob of 25 to 40 white men lynched John Humphries, a Black teenager. On July 14, the daughter of a white. suburban planter reported being assaulted in the woods. Race-based suspicion was immediately directed towards Black men and boys. Later that evening, without any evidence…
On September 24, 1891, a mob of at least 20 unmasked white men lynched a Black man named Hezekiah Rankin. Earlier that evening, a white co-worker at the Western North Carolina Railroad wanted Mr. Rankin to perform duties unrelated to his job. Mr. Rankin declined, having previously been reprimanded for…
On August 11. 1897, Bob Brackett, a Black man, was lynched by a mob of at least 1.000 white people in Reems Creek Township. Mr. Brackett was a traveling laborer working in the Asheville, North Carolina area. On August 8, 1897, a white woman from Weaverville reported an assault. Race-based…
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…
On the afternoon of July 7th, 1920, Ed Roach was lynched by a mob of approximately 200 white terrorists. He was wrongly identified as the person who attempted to assault a young white girl. He was arrested and taken to jail. A mob gathered at the jail, brought him to…
The Schafer Jail is of native granite stone and concrete construction. It was completed in 1910, and served McKenzie County for 31 years. It was from this jail that Charles Bannon, the confessed murderer of the six members of the Albert E. Haven Family, was taken by an angry mob…