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….
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….
Near this spot on the night of January 15, 1869, a group of masked horsemen lynched Wash Henley, a black Union army veteran, for running away with his white employer’s teenage daughter. Henley, born about 1841 in Mississippi, had served as blacksmith for Company B, 59th Ù.S. Colored Infantry with…