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Lafayette County Victims of Racial Terror Lynchings
For decades, African American men were lynched by white mobs in Lafayette County. Most of these men were lynched because of interactions with white women which were characterized as "inappropriate" or "assaults." These allegations against Black people were rarely subject to serious scrutiny. Instead, mobs frequently pulled lynching victims from jails, often facing little to no resistance from law enforcement officers who were legally required to protect them. Over 650 racial terror lynchings have been documented in Mississippi alone, at least seven having taken place in Lafayette County.
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On July 12, 1885, a white mob kidnapped Harris Tunstal from jail and hanged him behind the Methodist Episcopal Church near the Oxford square in Lafayette County.
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On November 13, 1890, a mob of white men lynched a Black man named William McGregory outside of Oxford in a small community named Orwood in Lafayette County, Mississippi.
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A mob hanged an unknown Black man on September 2, 1891, after kidnapping him from the Oxford jail.
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On the evening of July 30, 1893, a white mob hanged a Black man named William Steen in Paris, Mississippi.
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Around midnight on June 19, 1895, a white mob in Abbeville, Mississippi, lynched William Chandler in front of a railroad depot.
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On September 9, 1908, Lawson Patton, a jail trustee accused of the murder of a white woman, was fatally shot in his cell and hanged on the grounds of the Lafayette County Courthouse.
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On the evening of September 17, 1935, a mob of white men kidnapped Ellwood Higginbottom from the jail and hanged him to death.