Lynching in America / The Lynching of Lloyd Warner

Marker Text: On November 28, 1933, a mob of at least 5,000 white men, women, and youths lynched Lloyd Warner, an 18-year-old Black teenager, in St. Joseph. The mob seized Lloyd from the county jail at 5th and Jules streets, where he was being held on suspicion of a reported assault of a white woman. Race-based suspicion in this era often targeted Black men and boys after reports of crime, especially those involving white women. Suspicion alone was enough for many white people to presume the guilt of Black people, even in the absence of evidence or due process. Although Lloyd maintained his innocence, the mob besieged the jail for three and a half hours with torches, battering rams, iron pipes, and logs, intent on lynching him. When soldiers arrived in two tanks, the mob resisted, and the soldiers abandoned their duties. Once the mob broke into the jail, the sheriff chose to hand Lloyd over, despite a legal duty to protect him. The mob brutally beat and mutilated Lloyd before white youths hanged him from a tree. Mob members collected pieces of Lloyd’s clothing as “souvenirs” before burning his body. The crowd took pictures next to his remains. Lloyd’s mother was forced to bury her son with no funeral, “no mourners, no ministers, and no flowers.” Despite her efforts to sue the police for handing Lloyd over to be lynched before thousands of witnesses, no redress was given to Lloyd’s family, and no one was held accountable for his lynching.