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According to the New York Times, "The suspect, booked as Rubin Stacy, was hanged to a roadside tree within sight of the home of Mrs. Marion Jones, thirty year old mother of three children, who identified him as her assailant." Six deputies were escorting Stacy to a Dade County jail in Miami for "safekeeping." The six deputies were "overpowered" by approximately one hundred masked men, who ran their car off the road. "As far as we can figure out," Deputy Wright was quoted as saying,"they just picked him up with the rope from the ground-didn't bother to push him from an automobile or anything. He was filled full of bullets, too. I guess they shot him before and after they hanged him." "Subsequent investigation revealed that Stacy, a homeless tenant farmer, had gone to the house to ask for food; the woman became frightened and screamed when she saw Stacy's face." James Weldon Johnson captured the disconcerting tone of this photo when he described the epidemic of whites lynching blacks as a "problem of saving black America's body and white America's soul." The penciled inscription on the back refers to the murder of Jim Rush or Bush. There are eight listings in Decatur County of African American men lynched during this period. One of these lynchings was of a black man, Tok Seabwright, for assaults on two black girls. A black mob took him from county officials, lynched him, and riddled his body with bullets. |