Racial Terror Lynchings / The Lynching of Lige Daniels

Racial Terror Lynchings, also, The Lynching of Lige Daniels. Community Remembrance Project. Racial Terror Lynchings. Thousands of black people were the victims of lynching and racial violence in the United States between 1877 and 1950. During this era, racial terror lynching of African Americans emerged as a stunning form of violent resistance to emancipation and equal rights for African Americans, intended to intimidate black people and enforce racial hierarchy and segregation. Racial terror lynching was most prevalent in the South and was used to uphold white supremacy and enforce decades of political, social, and economic exploitation. Lynching became the most public and notorious form of terror and subordination. White mobs were usually permitted to engage in racial terror and brutal violence with impunity. Many black people were pulled out of jails or given over to mobs by law enforcement officials who were legally required to protect them. Terror lynchings often included burnings and mutilation, sometimes in front of crowds numbering in the thousands. Many of the names of lynching victims were not recorded and will never be known, but over 330 documented lynchings of black people took place in Texas alone, including Mr. Daniels and Mr. Buddy Evans, who was lynched on May 21, 1928, in Shelby County., The Lynching of Lige Daniels. On August 2, 1920, Lige Daniels, an African American man, was confined inside the county jail in Center, Texas awaiting trial. News of his arrest spread quickly through Shelby County and the state. Mr. Daniels was accused of killing a white woman during a time when deep racial hostility burdened black people with presumptions of guilt and focused suspicion on black residents anytime crimes were discovered. Although no evidence of guilt had been reviewed in court regarding the allegations against Lige Daniels, the accusation sparked immediate mob violence. From twenty miles south, a message was sent to Center's authorities, warning that if Mr. Daniels was not killed that day, a delegation from San Augustine would arrive later that night "to attend to the matter." Despite an order from the Governor to secure Mr. Daniels's safety, a mob of white men, swelling to an estimated one thousand participants, beat down the jail's doors and stormed inside. The mob seized Mr. Daniels from his cell and hanged him from an oak tree on the courthouse yard. Like many victims of racial terror lynching, no proof of Lige Daniels's guilt was required. Despite the fact that perpetrators of the lynching posed for photographs under his brutalized body, no one who participated in the mob was held accountable for his lynching.