Lynching in America
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Lynching of Erastus Brown

Lynching in America, also, Lynching of Erastus Brown. Community Remembrance Project. , Lynching in America. Thousands of Black people were the victims of racial terror lynching in the United States between 1865 and 1950. The lynching of African Americans during this era was a form of racial terrorism intended to intimidate Black people and enforce racial hierarchy and segregation. After the Civil War, violent resistance to equal rights for African Americans and an ideology of white supremacy led to fatal violence against Black women, men, and children. Many African Americans were lynched following accusations of violating social customs, engaging in interracial relationships, or committing crimes, even when there was no evidence tying the accused to any offense. It was not uncommon for lynch mobs to seize their victims from jails, prisons, courtrooms, or out of police hands, often without fear of any legal repercussions. Though armed and legally required to protect the men and women in their custody, police rarely used force to resist white mobs intent on killing Black people and sometimes even participated in lynchings. Racial terror lynchings often included burnings and mutilation, sometimes in front of crowds numbering in the thousands. Many names of those whose lives were claimed by these acts of racially motivated violence were not recorded and will never be known, but at least 60 racial terror lynchings have been documented in Missouri., Lynching of Erastus Brown. July 10, 1897. In the pre-dawn hours of July 10, 1897, an armed mob of white men brutally lynched Erastus Brown, a Black husband and father of two, near the Bourbeuse River Bridge in Union, Missouri. Mr. Brown was no more than 20 years old at the time of his death. On July 2, Mr. Brown left his home to retrieve medicine for his sick infant child. While on this journey, he was accused of hitting a white woman with a rock. Mr. Brown was arrested shortly after the accusation, with no evidence tying him to the alleged crime, and placed in the Union County Jail. On July 10, an armed lynch mob of approximately forty prominent white farmers traveled to Union on horseback. The mob stormed the jail, with no resistance from the officers on duty, dragged Mr. Brown to the bridge, and hanged him from a nearby willow tree. Though several community members in Union, including the county prosecutor, either saw or interacted with the mob, no one was willing to identify members of the mob to local authorities after the lynching of Mr. Brown. The local sheriff stated that there was "no use" in investigating the lynching. Like nearly all lynching victims, Mr. Brown was killed without legal intervention or protection from a white mob that was not held accountable for his death. Tragically, Mr. Brown's infant child died two days after his lynching.