Victim ID: VA1893091501
Victim Name: Jesse Mitchell
Race: Black
Sex: Male
Age: 25
Job: Employed on the farm
Method of Death: Hanged and riddled with bullets
Accusation: Criminal assault on a 12 year-old white girl, a farmer’s step-daughter
Date: 1893-09-15
City: Amelia Courthouse
Mob Composition: 20-25 people
Summary: At 1AM on September 15th, 1893, Jesse Mitchell, a 25-year-old black man, was lynched by a mob of 25 people in Amelia Courthouse for criminally assaulting Mary Thraves, a 12-year-old white girl.
Jesse Mitchell was an employee on the farm owned by Mary Thraves’ stepfather. On July 29th, 1891, Mitchell allegedly followed Thraves into a barn where he assaulted her (Richmond Dispatch). Mitchell was soon captured and taken to jail to await trial. According to the Richmond Dispatch, “so great were the threats of lynching that on August 7, 1891, Judge Farrar sent the prisoner to the Richmond city jail for safe keeping.” Mitchell endured two trials before he was lynched. At the first trial, Mitchell was convicted and sentenced to death, only to have the verdict overturned by the Supreme Court. After the second trial, Mitchell was again convicted, but the Judge overturned the conviction based on a technicality. A third trial was then set to take place on September 15th, 1893. However, “this was too much for the people of Amelia, who were thoroughly convinced of the guilt of the prisoner, and were tired of delays and technicalities, and they took the law into their own hands” (Richmond Dispatch). According to The Times, after midnight on September 15th, 1893, a mob of 20-25 angry citizens broke into Mitchell’s jail shouting ‘murder!’ ‘murder!’, and “in about ten minutes they had taken him out and carried him about two hundred yards from the jail and hung him to a pine tree, and then fired eight or nine shots into his dangling body.”
Both the Richmond Planet and the (Richmond) Times denounced the lynching.
News Coverage: Alexandria Gazette, Norfolk Virginian, Richmond Dispatch, Richmond Planet, Roanoke Times, Shenandoah Herald, Staunton Spectator, The Times
Article Link (from Alexandria Gazette published on 1893-09-15)
Article Link (from Richmond Dispatch published on 1893-09-16)
Article Link (from Richmond Dispatch published on 1893-09-20)
Article Link (from Richmond Dispatch published on 1893-10-22)
Article Link (from Roanoke Times published on 1893-09-16)
Article Link (from Roanoke Times published on 1893-09-19)
Article Link (from Shenandoah Herald published on 1893-09-22)
Article Link (from The Times published on 1893-09-16)
Article Link (from The Times published on 1893-09-17)