Lawson Patton, September, 8, 1908

Oxford, Lafayette, Mississippi

On September 9, 1908, Lawson Patton (Nib or Nelse Patton), a mob of upwards of 100 men and boys battered the doors of the jail, fatally shot Patton, and hanged him from a tree on the grounds of the Lafayette County Courthouse (some sources say the mob hanged him from a telegraph pole). Patton ran a “blind Tiger” or type of speakeasy with Black clientele & was a bootlegger. He was accused of murdering a white woman after delivering a message from her husband in jail, where Patton was a “trustee.”

The local news source, the Oxford Eagle, reported that some in the town, including some ministers and Judge Roane, sought to calm the mob, but W. V. Sullivan, a former Mississippi Senator, gave a speech that stirred the mob to lynch Patton.

Sources

• African American Victims of Lynching pp. 127-129 in Finnegan, Terence. A Deed So Accursed : Lynching in Mississippi and South Carolina, 1881-1940, University of Virginia Press, 2013.

• [New Orleans] Daily Picayune, Sept. 9, 1908, p. 1

• Lafayette County Press, Sept. 9,  1908, cited in Arthur Kinney’s Faulkner and Racism, which states Patton was the inspiration for the character of Joe Christmas in Light in August.

• New York Times, Sept. 9, 1908, p. 1

• Oxford Eagle, Sept. 10, 1908, p. 3 column 4