But along with other cases where the mob tore up the railroad tracks to prevent outside reinforcements for the sheriff, we have examples like this.
Shelbyville, Ky. (1911)
Before 01/17/1911: A very
well-organized lynch mob shut down the town’s electric power, cut the jail’s
phone lines, then went to the jail masked, armed, and carrying sledge hammers
and picks with which to force open the jail doors. The mob took away three blacks out of 17
prisoners; shot to death one, hung another, bound and threw the third one into Clay
Creek (assumed drowned).
Category: public
Suicide: no
Cause: lynch
Weapon: firearm, hung, drown[1]
There was a case in Delaware during the Theodore Roosevelt administration. A black man was accused of raping and murdering a white girl. A group (mob does not seem like the right word) of several hundred white men, mostly workers from nearby shipyards, broke into the jail, took him out, and hanged him. The sheriff barricaded the jail quite strongly, but the lynchers brought tools from the shipyards, including drills and cutting torches, and systematically breached all the defenses.
ReplyDeleteThe incident was somewhat embarrassing to the President. The State Department had been induced to issue a statement denouncing a recent pogrom in Russia. The Russians merely pointed to the Delaware lynching in response.
I have also seen a facsimile of a newspaper front page which carried the announcement of a lynching scheduled for that evening.