Lynching in America
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Lynching of Charles Hale

Lynching in America, also, Lynching of Charles Hale. Community Remembrance Project. Lynching in America. Thousands of Black people were victims of lynching in the United States between 1865 and 1950. During this era, lynching emerged as the most notorious and public form of racial terrorism, used to enforce racial hierarchy and segregation. Public spectacle lynchings, like the lynching of Charles Hale, were often committed in prominent community locations and attended by hundreds to thousands of white men, women, and children without fear of legal repercussions. Lynch mobs would inflict extreme violence on the body of a victim, then allow the victim to hang for hours in an attempt to instill fear in the Black community. In most cases of racial terror lynching, law enforcement failed to intervene to prevent lynchings. Mobs routinely abducted Black people rom courts, jails, and out of police custody. Local, state, and federal officials tolerated and sometimes encouraged and participated in these lawless killings of Black women, men, and children, especially by granting impunity to mob participants, who rarely faced criminal or communal consequences for their lawlessness. Local officials and police failed to protect Black people from mob violence. Although many victims of racial terror lynching will never be known, over 593 lynchings have been documented in Georgia, with at least one known to have taken place in Gwinnett County., Lynching of Charles Hale. Shortly after midnight on April 8, 1911, a mob of at least 200 white men lynched a Black man named Charles Hale in downtown Lawrenceville. The mob broke into the Lawrenceville Jail and abducted Mr. Hale from his cell, with no resistance from the police officers who were armed and responsible for protecting him. The mob dragged Mr. Hale to a telephone pole near the Gwinnett County Courthouse, hanged him, and then shot his body repeatedly. Law enforcement took no action and allowed his body to hang until the next day when white families, including children, posed for photographs with Mr. Hale's mutilated body. The photographs show a sign hanging from Mr. Hale that reads, “Please do not wake him.” According to news reports, on April 7, a white farmer reported that his wife had been assaulted. A posse of white men formed by the sheriff to hunt down the alleged assailant encountered Mr. Hale in the nearby woods and captured him. The mob lynched Mr. Hale before he had the chance to defend himself against the accusation. County officials eventually had Mr. Hale's body removed and buried in a paupers cemetery, making no effort to hold a coroner's inquest or to identify mob participants. None of the mob participants or the county officials who failed to intervene were held accountable for the lynching of Charles Hale.