all of a sudden we got amnesia

At the funeral of Dunsmuir, Oregon's Chief of Police, F. R. Daw, a number of mourners planned the lynching of his alleged murderer, Clyde Johnson. Early on the morning of August 3, 1935, the masked mob, estimated as large as fifty, forcibly removed Johnson from his jail cell and dragged him three miles south of town where they hung him from a pine tree. Local and state officials expressed mixed reaction to news of the lynching.

District Attorney James Davis declared that he would open an investigation and "do everything the law requires to apprehend members of the mob." On the other hand, the California Attorney General, referring to the recently delayed execution of an accused murderer, stated that the "uncontrollable unrest" was a natural result of the "apathy of the Supreme Court of the United States."

Bennie Simmons, or Dennis Simmons, accused of the murder of sixteen-year old Susie Church, was taken from prison guards in Anadarko, Oklahoma. His killers led him to a nearby bridge and hanged him from the limb of a cottonwood tree flourishing by a stream. "

The Negro prayed and shrieked in agony as the flames reached his flesh," reported a local newspaper, "but his cries were drowned out by yells and jeers of the mob." As Simmons began to lose consciousness the mob fired at the body, cutting it to pieces. " The mobsters made no attempt to conceal their identity," remarked the Enfaula Democrat, "but there were no prosecutions." Purchased in Oklahoma.

FROM KLUTTZ'S STUDIO E. Council St., near Court House, SALISBURY, N.C.

The mob numbered into the thousands that wrenched five black men from the civil authorities of Salisbury, North Carolina on the night of August 3, 1906. They accused the men of murdering members of a local family, named Lyerly. The New York Times reported that the victims were tortured with knives before being hanged and then riddled with bullets. The authorities in North Carolina, alarmed at what was one of the largest multiple lynchings of the 20th century, took unusual steps to punish the leaders of the mob.

After the Governor ordered the National Guard to restore order, local officials arrested more than two-dozen suspected leaders. One of the killers, George Hall, was convicted and sentenced to 15 years at a hard labor in the state penitentiary. The New York Times predicted that, by taking these measures, North Carolina's Governor Glenn was not improving his political prospects.

Early one morning in the 1960s, two young boys bicycling to a favorite fishing hole happened upon this scene: a county prison farm trustee's dead weight hanging by the neck in a thorny bramble of Georgia hardwoods.

After they reported it to the local authorities, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's chief looked brie--y at the scene and de-clared, "Suicide." This photograph was snapped, and the investigation was closed.

Early in the cold morning of January 12, 1916, a masked mob of some two hundred dragged John Richards from his jail cell in Wayne County, North Carolina. He was accused of the murder of a local farmer named Anderson Gurley. According to local newspaper accounts, he was taken to the scene of Gurley's murder and hanged. This photo puts that account in doubt. Richards is suspended from a deciduous tree by a rope secured under his arms. His pants are lowered, and a cloth is draped over the front of his body. It is more likely that he was castrated and died from the gunfire that "almost cut his body to pieces."

The Calvaryesque cloud formation hovering over Richards is most likely the product of a light-leak in the camera lens.


Lynchers often paraded their victim down the main street, through black neighborhoods, and in front of "colored schools" that were in session.

Jesse Washington, seventeen years old, was the chief suspect in the May 8, 1916, murder of Lucy Fryer of Robinson, Texas, on whose farm he worked as a laborer. After the lynching, Washington's corpse was placed in a burlap bag and dragged around City Hall Plaza, through the main streets of Waco, and seven miles to Robinson, where a large black population resided.

His charred corpse was hung for public display in front of a blacksmith shop. The sender of this card, Joe Meyers, an oiler at the Bellmead car department and a Waco resident, marked his photo with a cross (now an ink smudge to left of victim). This card bears the advertising stamp, "katy electric studio temple texas. h. lippe prop." inscribed in brown ink: "This is the Barbecue we had last night my picture is to the left with a cross over it your son Joe."

Repeated references to eating are found in lynching-related correspondence, such as "coon cooking," "barbecue," and "main fare."


Six black circus workers, alleged to have assaulted a young white girl on the circus grounds, were dragged from their cells in a Duluth, Minnesota, jail by a mob of five thousand people. Twelve policemen were injured during the attack. In an impromptu trial, orchestrated by the mob leaders, three of the suspects were "found not guilty." The three "found guilty" were hanged. A subsequent investigation by the civic authorities proved that none of the murdered men could have participated in the assault.

The New York Times remarked that the "Lynching of Negroes in Duluth is far from the first that occurred in the North. Human nature is much the same in both sections of the country."

The following account is drawn from James Cameron's book, A Time of Terror:

Thousands of Indianans carrying picks, bats, ax handles, crowbars, torches, and firearms attacked the Grant County Courthouse, determined to "get those goddamn Niggers." A barrage of rocks shattered the jailhouse windows, sending dozens of frantic inmates in search of cover. A sixteen-year-old boy, James Cameron, one of the three intended victims, paralyzed by fear and incomprehension, recognized familiar faces in the crowd-schoolmates, and customers whose lawns he had mowed and whose shoes he had polished-as they tried to break down the jailhouse door with sledgehammers. Many police officers milled outside with the crowd, joking. Inside, fifty guards with guns waited downstairs.

The door was ripped from the wall, and a mob of fifty men beat Thomas Shipp senseless and dragged him into the street. The waiting crowd "came to life." It seemed to Cameron that "all of those ten to fifteen thousand people were trying to hit him all at once." The dead Shipp was dragged with a rope up to the window bars of the second victim, Abram Smith. For twenty minutes, citizens pushed and shoved for a closer look at the "dead nigger." By the time Abe Smith was hauled out he was equally mutilated. " Those who were not close enough to hit him threw rocks and bricks. Somebody rammed a crowbar through his chest several times in great satisfaction." Smith was dead by the time the mob dragged him "like a horse" to the courthouse square and hung him from a tree. The lynchers posed for photos under the limb that held the bodies of the two dead men.

Then the mob headed back for James Cameron and "mauled him all the way to the courthouse square," shoving and kicking him to the tree, where the lynchers put a hanging rope around his neck. Cameron credited an unidentified woman's voice with silencing the mob (Cameron, a devout Roman Catholic, believes that it was the voice of the Virgin Mary) and opening a path for his retreat to the county jail and, ultimately, for saving his life. Mr. Cameron has committed his life to retelling the horrors of his experience and "the Black Holocaust" in his capacity as director and founder of the museum with the same name in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Under magnification, one can see the girls in this photo clutching ragged swatches of dark cloth.

After souvenir hunters divvied up the bloodied pants of Abram Smith, his naked lower body was clothed in a Klansman's robe-not unlike the loincloth in traditional depictions of Christ on the cross. Lawrence Beitler, a studio photographer, took this photo. For ten days and nights he printed thousands of copies, which sold for fifty cents apiece.

Joseph Richardson was removed from the county jail in Leitchfield by a mob and lynched on the public square at 1:00 a.m. on September 26, 1913. The mob presumed he had assaulted an eleven-year-old white girl named Ree Goff.
The photographer who took this picture peddled the cards door to door. A descendent of the original purchaser expressed the remorse the townspeople felt upon recognizing the victim as the town drunk, who had "merely stumbled into the child, and not even torn her dress."


Lynching of an unidentified African American male, onlookers including young boys. September 3, 1915, Alabama.

Gelatin silver print. 2 1/2 x 4"

Inked inscription on back, "September 3rd, 1915."

This photo was removed from an Alabama family's photo album. No lynching on this date has been recorded.


The defiant victim of this mob is forced to pose on a buggy for the camera. The handcuffs bite into his inflamed lower arms. He stares directly into the camera lens with undiminished dignity. In the righthand corner, wearing a softbrimmed hat, edging into the camera's view, is a grinning man with a whip. A coarse blanket rests on the buggy seat.

The three cabinet cards depicting the torture and hanging of this man (numbers 38 and 39 and 40) were at one time laced together with a twisted purple thread, so as to unfold like a map