John Carter

John Carter was a black man accused of assaulting a white farmer's wife and daughter in Little Rock, Arkansas. A mob lynched Carter on May 5, 1927, dragging his body behind a car, and burning it atop a pile of wooden church pews removed from a local African-American church. The local sheriff, who witnessed the scene but did not intervene, is reported to have said, "I never saw a more orderly crowd of hunters in my life."

In the wake of the lynching, the Little Rock Chamber of Commerce called for the removal of the mayor, chief of police, and sheriff, without result. Author Marcet Haldeman-Julius, who visited the city soon after the lynching, reported that members of the mob took the law into their own hands because, as one told her, "They's been too many of these damn niggers gettin' away. ... It was time folks showed 'em something."

References

• James Harmon Chadbourn, Lynching and the Law (The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., 2008), 66-67.
• Amy Louise Wood, Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940 (University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 42, 98.