William McGregory

Orwood, Lafayette County, Mississippi, November 13, 1890

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. After reportedly asking a white woman to stop while on her way home and following her, a mob of white men seized him, shot him repeatedly and killed him.

Earlier that day, a white woman reported that a Black man “ordered her to halt” and followed her while she was riding home on horseback. Based on this interaction, the white woman made public allegations that the man had tried to assault her and suspicion was focused on William McGregory, who was subsequently taken by citizens into custody for a sham trial before the magistrate.

During the era of racial terror, accusations of “attempted assault” could be based on any action of a Black man that could be interpreted as seeking or desiring contact with a white woman. For example, accusations against Black men of assault and attempted assault included merely looking at or accidentally bumping into a white woman, smiling, winking, getting too close, and even being disagreeable. Almost 25 percent of documented lynchings were sparked by accusations of sexual assault at a time when the mere accusation of sexual contact between a Black man and white woman regularly aroused violent mobs and ended in lynching. African Americans in the South faced hostile suspicion and were burdened by a presumption of guilt, such that white peoples’ allegations against Black people were rarely subject to scrutiny. For Mr. McGregory, who had not been formally charged with or convicted of any crime, race rather than the alleged offense most significantly contributed to him being targeted for lynching.

While Mr. McGregory was before the magistrate, he had not been convicted of any crime when a mob of white men interrupted the trial and seized him from the proceedings. It was not uncommon during this era for lynch mobs to seize their victims from jails, prisons, courtrooms, or out of police custody. The mob abducted Mr. McGregory from the proceedings, shot him repeatedly, and killed him, riddling his body with bullets. Tragically, little attention was given to documenting what happened to Mr. McGregory’s body or his family following the lynching, or what happened to the individuals who lynched him. There are no records to suggest that participants in the mob were ever held accountable for the death of Mr. McGregory.

Similar to contemporary media representations of Black people who experience violence at the hands of white people, local newspapers reporting on the lynching of Mr. McGregory chose euphemisms evoking images of the white men in the mob as chivalrous protectors of white femininity calling them “vigilant citizens.” Yet, derogatory and dehumanizing terms like “fiend” and “demon” were used to refer to Mr. McGregory, who tragically had his life taken from him before exercising his right to due process in the court of law.

William McGregory is one of at least 654 documented African American victims of racial terror lynching killed in Mississippi between 1877 and 1950, and one of 7 documented victims in Lafayette County.