City Jail: A Site of Racial Terror in Alexandria. Lynching of Benjamin Thomas, 1899

Marker Text: A “Public Prison” for the Enslaved. Long before a lynch mob abducted Benjamin Thomas from the Alexandria jail, this site was one of racial oppression, particularly due to its connection to slavery. Within a decade of Congress authorizing $10,000 to build this jail, the American Anti-Slavery Society featured it in an oversized broadsheet do cumenting how “public prisonsn in the nation ‘s capital – funded by taxpayers – were associated with slavery. The jail regularly held Black people who had been captured after attempting to escape from bondage until their enslavers claimed them. Some enslaved people were publicly auctioned at this site, often because their enslaver did not want to claim them, or to pay off a dead enslaver’s debt. Enslaved people charged with serious crimes in Alexandria City, and County – present-day Arlington – were frequently incarcerated here. In 1858, Jenny Farr, was executed in the yard after being sentenced to death for killing her enslaver’s wife who had abused her. A local paper wrote, “five hundred persons witnessed the sad scene.” Trail of Terror. On August 8, between 500 and 2000 people were outside this jail demanding authorities turn over Benjamin Thomas. Police refused to give him up. Gunshots rang out and the guards sought cover in an interior office. After ramming the jailhouse door with a beam, at least 50 men entered the building looking for Thomas, but they were confronted with a fortified iron door. While they worked to open it, Mayor George Simpson appealed to the crowd to go home, promising to call a Grand Jury the next day to “legally” hang Thomas. After breaking into the hall, the lynchers terrorized prisoners while searching for T homas. “As the mob caught sight of him, a piercing shriek of exultation rent the air. Pistols were fired and a throng of hundreds charged down upon the helpless victim,” wrote The Washington Post, August 9, 1899. According to news accounts, they placed a rope around his neck, in his mouth and under his arms, the “hooting and jeering mob” dragged him, “his head bumping over cobblestones.” For over a half of a mile, they struck, stabbed, and kicked Thomas who cried out for his mother. “His cries and moans were heartrending,” wrote the Evening Star, ”down to King Street the crowd proceeded, shouting and firing pistols in the air.” At the corner of King and Fairfax Streets, they hanged Benjamin Thomas from a lamp post, then fired rounds of bullets into his body.