At this site, on Tuesday night, Nov. 19, 1929, Marshall Ratliff was hung from a utility pole guy wire until dead before a crowd of about 1,500 people. Ratliff was also known as the Santa Claus Robber for his dressing as Santa Claus and leading a gang of four to…
Joseph R. Holmes, formerly enslaved in Charlotte County, campaigned for civil rights and education after emancipation. He served as a delegate to the Virginia Republican Party conventions in 1867 and 1869 and was elected to represent Charlotte and Halifax Counties in Virginia’s Constitutional Convention of 1867-68, held as a precondition…
Near this spot, on May 22, 1917, a mob tied Ell Persons to a log, doused him with gasoline, and burned him alive. Several thousand people watched in what newspapers described as a holiday atmosphere. Authorities had arrested Persons, a local African American woodcutter, for the murder of Antoinette…
Near this spot on May 22, 1917, a lynching party chained Ell Persons to a log, doused him in gasoline, and burned him alive. An estimated 5,000 spectators witnessed his death or viewed his remains soon afterward. Persons, a black woodcutter who lived nearby, was facing charges of raping and…
The last known or recorded lynching in Davidson County took place in 1924 near this site. Around midnight on December 14, 1924, a mob of at least six armed, white, masked men entered Nashville General Hospital and abducted Samuel Smith, age 15. The men quickly identified Smith, who was in…
Elbert Williams, an African American Haywood County native, was one of the early members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) killed in the United States for his civil rights work. He and his wife Annie became charter members of the NAACP Brownsville Branch in 1939….