The Lynching of Arthur Henry

Marker Text: Shortly after midnight on Friday, November 27, 1925, three white men abducted a 35-year-old Black man named Arthur Henry from his bed at Orange General Hospital. Nearly two weeks later, Mr. Henry’s lifeless body was found in the unincorporated community of Conway, shot through the heart. Hours before his abduction, Mr. Henry was admitted to the hospital with injuries after exchanging gunfire with police. Officials claimed that Mr. Henry shot at detectives as soon as they entered his home to investigate a report. In contrast, two witnesses denied that account and said that the shooting happened while police had Mr. Henry in a back room. In this era, Black people were regularly presumed guilty without evidence – especially when accused of harming white police officers. Mr. Henry never had the opportunity to defend himself at trial: he was shot and beaten in his home, then arrested and confined in the hospital’s “Negro Ward” with hands and feet shackled. The hospital superintendent reportedly warned police that mob violence was likely, and an officer was assigned to stand guard, but no one stopped the mob from seizing Mr. Henry from the hospital. His corpse was found 12 days later. While Mr. Henry’s wife, Viola Henry, and three other Black women were arrested as “witnesses” to the original shooting, no one was arrested or held accountable for his lynching. A coroner’s jury concluded Mr. Henry died at the hands of “unknown persons.”