October 11, 1910: Grant Richardson

Today we find our lynching in the pages of The Washington Post (Washington, D. C.) printed on the 13th of October, 1910:

MOB LYNCHES PRISONER.

Takes Negro From Deputy and Riddles Body With Bullets.

Montgomery, Ala., Oct. 12.—Grant Richardson, a negro, was lynched last night near Centerville, by a mob. He was being brought to Bibb county jail, charged with assaulting a white woman.

The deputy having him in charge was overpowered and the negro's body was riddled with bullets.

An article of interest is found in the Richmond Planet (Richmond, Virginia) printed on the 19th of August, 1899:

(Harper's Weekly.)

There has been another extensive Negro hunt in Georgia. A woman is said to have been assaulted by two Negroes at Saffold on July 20. Up to July 25, five Negroes had been lynched on account of this crime, and several other deaths were likely to follow. The custom in these cases seems to be to extort confessions from the perpetrators of the crime when caught, and then to hunt down and kill all Negroes implicated by the criminals' testimony. Heaven knows what degree of justice or injustice is done!

At such time the wildest and most improbable tales seem to find credence and when killing is all over, and denial is made that any of the men killed were guilty of anything, it is impossible to prove the denial. There is no machinery for proving a man's guilt after you have killed him. It has been asserted repeatedly, and is very widely believed, that Sam Hose, who was roasted in Georgia last spring was guilty of no worse crime than killing a man in self-defence; and as for Strickland, the Negro preacher who was killed at the same time, the charges against him were improbable, to say the least.

Now it will be asserted that there was no assault committed at Saffold, and that the gang of Negroes who were said to be accessories were innocent. There will be no record of their guilt, no recorded testimony, nothing to show for their taking off but pistols, ropes, and scalps. Lynching is surely very unsatisfactory. There is a strong feeling against it now in the South, and here's hoping that it will grow. The papers said last week that a Georgian named Cardell, who captured Mack, one of the principals in crime at Saffold, secreted his prisoner with intent to get him to jail, and only gave him up when a rope had been put around his own neck and hangin[g] threatened.

Thank you for joining me today, and as always, I hope I have left you with something to ponder.