Lynching No. 16

In Thomasville, Ga. last week a nine-year-old girl screamed that a Negro had attacked her. Immediately a posse of 1,000 formed, followed bloodhounds to the County Stockade, a chaingang prison-camp. There the sheriff arrested five Negroes, took them before the nine-year-old for identification. She picked Willie Kirkland, 20, convict doing time for horse-stealing. The warden said Kirkland had not been out of the Stockade all that day. When Kirkland was returned to the camp, a mob of 75 gathered, including the nine-year-old's father. The sheriff decided to take his prisoner to a nearby town for safekeeping, emerged with him. The girl's father raised a shotgun. Turmoil followed and, despite the urgings of many a citizen, the mob disarmed the sheriff, bundled Willie Kirkland into a truck, took him to Magnolia Gardens (where Sportsman Harry Payne Whitney has a shooting preserve, where the late Senator Marcus Alonzo Hanna had his winter home). There they hanged him from an oak tree--16th lynching in the U. S. this year, Georgia's second in the fortnight. After shooting at the suspended body, the mob cut it down, tied it to the truck, dragged it to and around the Thomasville square while a morbid crowd looked on.

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