Lynching in America
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The Lynching of Zeb Long

Lynching in America, also, The Lynching of Zeb Long. Community Remembrance Project. , Lynching in America. Between 1865 and 1950, thousands of Black people were victims of lynching across the United States. Following the Civil War, many white Southerners fiercely resisted equal rights for African Americans and sought to uphold an ideology of white supremacy through intimidation and fatal violence. Lynching emerged as the most public and notorious form of racial terrorism, which often went beyond hanging and included death by gunshot, burning, or mutilation. Many Black people were lynched for resisting economic exploitation, violating perceived social customs, engaging in interracial relationships, or being accused of crimes, even when there was no evidence tying the accused to any offense. White mobs regularly disregarded the legal system, seizing their victims from police custody or lynching victims in broad daylight before crowds of spectators. Law enforcement officers routinely failed to resist mobs or prevent lynchings, and at times, actively participated in mob violence. State and federal officials largely tolerated these lawless killings of Black women, men, and children by not committing to robust investigations after lynchings or even identifying mob participants to hold them accountable for their crimes. Many victims of racial terror lynching will never be known, but at least 595 racial terror lynchings have been documented in Georgia between 1865 and 1950. At least 36 of those victims were lynched in Fulton County., The Lynching of Zeb Long. On the morning of September 24, 1906, the body of a 30-year-old Black man named Zeb Long was found hanging from a tree in East Point. Two days earlier, a mob of at least 5,000 white men and boys began terrorizing and violently attacking Black men, women, and children in the Atlanta area, inciting the four-day 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre. Law enforcement failed to intervene until the Governor ordered state troops to regain control of the city. As police reamed East Point on the evening of September 23 they encountered Mr. Long and arrested him for “incendiary talk about the way white people were treating negroes.” The officers took Mr. Long to the small wooden jail in East Point that was described by a local newspaper as a “flimsy” shack. The arresting officer took no further precautions, and around 5:00 am on September 24, a mob of at least 50 white men stormed the jail and kidnapped Mr. Long. Placing a rope around his neck, the mob dragged Mr. Long to a wooded area about half a mile west of the jail. Though Mr. Lang “begged for his life,” the mob “promptly” lynched him and left his body hanging to a tree. A coroner's jury determined on September 25 that Mr. Long had been killed by “unknown parties,” and no further investigation was made. No one who participated in the white mob violence that terrorized the East Point Black community and lynched Mr. Long between September 22 to 25 was held accountable for their crimes.