In the early hours of February 15. 1878, at least three White men shot and killed a Black man named Reuben Dennis. The men abducted Mr. Dennis from the Shelbyville home of a Black man named Alfred Rucker, forced him at gunpoint to a nearby field, and fatally shot him….
On July 20, 1891, Sam Pulliam, a Black man, was lynched by a mob of at least 60 White people. The mob formed to pursue him after the wife of a prominent White farmer accused him of assault while her husband was away from home. Fearful that he would face…
In Franklin County, white mobs lynched at least six Black people between the end of the Civil War and 1950. Two of these victims were lynched here at the Singing Bridge. In the early morning hours of August 15, 1894, a white mob hanged a Black man named Marshall Boston…
On August 15, 1908, at about 2:00 a.m., the mob reached the home of Scott Burton. The fifty-six-year-old black barber tried to escape out a side door of his home but was overtaken and pummeled unconscious by the mob. He was then dragged to Twelfth and Madison Streets and hanged…
On August 15, 1908, William Donnegan, a seventy-six-year-old retired black shoemaker, was taken from his nearby home by the mob and across the street to Edwards School. His throat was slashed after which the mob attempted to hang him. Upon the approach of the militia, the mob fled. The militia…
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…