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1941: Lynchings

Five known lynchings during 1941 brought the grim total since 1882 to 5,134 — 1,456 of them of white persons and 3,678 of them Negroes. All of the victims during 1941 were Negroes. Most startling of the five took place on Army territory at Fort Benning, Ga., on April 3 where Felix Hall, a Negro volunteer was found hanging to a tree, clad in the uniform of the United States Army, his hands bound behind him. At the year's end the War Department had not made public the result of the findings of an investigation. The 1941 record of known lynchings is as follows: Feb. 20, Bruce Tisdale, Georgetown, S. C.; April 3, Felix Hall, Ft. Benning, Ga.; April 13, Robert Walker, Gaston County, N. C.; May 12, Robert Sapp, Blakely, Ga.; May 13, A. C. Williams, Quincy, Fla.

Students of the problem of lynching and mob violence, and compilers of lynching statistics, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Tuskegee Institute and the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching, were united in the belief that nation-wide condemnation of lynching growing out of the campaign against the evil and the agitation for Federal legislation against lynching had forced lynchers to use two new techniques. One of these, which had been noted for several years, was the going underground of lynching and the suppression of newspaper accounts regarding killings, particularly of Negroes in the South. This was made possible by a small posse getting rid of the victim, in contrast with previous years in which mobs of from 1,000 to 10,000 participated in the orgies.

The second technique, which seemed to be developing in 1941, to achieve the death of a victim without consequences to the killer or the bringing of opprobrium to the state, was seen in two episodes in Texas. On June 10, as a jury was being selected, Bob White, a Negro, was shot to death in the court room at Conroe, Tex., by W. S. Cochrane. White had twice previously been convicted of criminal assault upon Cochrane's wife. The nature of the trials in a mob-ridden atmosphere and the flimsiness of the evidence against White had brought two reversals for him — one by the Texas Court of Appeals and the other by the United States Supreme Court. The decision in the latter case bitterly scored the manner in which White had been victimized. Court attendants assigned to guard White made themselves conspicuously absent while Cochrane entered the courtroom with a revolver in his hand with which he killed White. Cochrane was released on very small bail and two days later was acquitted, to the cheers of a crowded courtroom.

In similar fashion, Mott Flournoy was stabbed to death on Nov. 23 in the courtroom at Lufkin, Texas. See also CRIME.

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