Born in 1894, Willie Temple was the eldest of four children of Montgomery County farmers Lewis and Ella (Shorter) Temple. He worked as a dining car cook for the L&N Railroad. On the night of September 29, 1919, Temple and a friend were returning from a social event when they…
On Tuesday, December 6, 1921, Mr. Fred Rouse, an African-American husband, father of three, and non-union butcher for Swift & Co., was attacked by white union strikers and agitators in the Niles City Stockyards (now part of Fort Worth). Mr. Rouse sustained stab wounds and broken bones. His skull was…
From 1886 to 1911, white mobs lynched at least nine Black people in Bulloch County. Suspicion alone-even in the absence of evidence or due process-caused many white people to presume a Black person’s guilt. On July 15, 1886, a white mob abducted Jake Braswell following the alleged assault of a…
Ed Johnson was one of 4,400 known black victims of lynching between 1877 and 1950. In the decade following emancipation, the terror of lynching became a primary means of enforcing white supremacy in Southern communities. Black men and women knew that they were always in danger of white mob violence….
On August 2, 1920, Lige Daniels, an African American man, was confined inside the county jail in Center, Texas awaiting trial. News of his arrest spread quickly through Shelby County and the state. Mr. Daniels was accused of killing a white woman during a time when deep racial hostility burdened…
On the night of July 11, 1964 three African-American World War II veterans returning home following training at Ft. Benning, Georgia were noticed in Athens by local members of the Ku Klux Klan. The officers were followed to the nearby Broad River Bridge where their pursuers fired into the vehicle,…