Lynching in America / The Lynching of Moses Smith

Marker Text: On November 1, 1868, a mob of white men brutally lynched a Black man named Moses Smith in his home in Gordon, a farming community in northern Alachua County. Five white men armed with rifles rode up to Mr. Sith’s cabin, shot at him through the cracks in the walls, tore down the cabin’s roof, and threw a firebomb inside to force him from his home. When Mr. Smith fled his house to escape the fire, mob members fired eight shots into his body, killing him. R. Smith was lynched two days before the 1868 U.S. presidential election, the first in which Black men in the South were eligible to vote in large numbers. White mobs across Florida perpetrated countless acts of racial violence before the election-including firing on campaign rallies and ambushing politically active citizen in their own homes-seeking to terrorize Black communities and keep them from voting. After Mr. Smith was lynched, local Black citizens mobilized and spoke out against racial terror, demonstrating immense courage in a time when Black resistance to racial violence could engender deadly retaliation by white community members. Between 1865 and 1950, hundreds of Black people were lynched for protesting, responding to, or trying to prevent racially motivated violence. Despite these efforts by the Black community in Gordon, none of the members of the mob that lynched Moses Smith were ever held accountable.