Search options

Elbert Williams of Brownsville, Tennessee, was lynched in 1940 for trying to arrange Black residents to register and vote; additionally that 12 months, Jesse Thornton of Luverne, Alabama, was lynched for failing to address a police officer as "Mister". In 1940, three lynchings of Black males by whites (no KKK affiliation is known) came about in the South: Elbert Williams was the primary NAACP member identified to be killed for civil rights activities: he was murdered in Brownsville, Tennessee, for working to register Black folks to vote, and several different activists were run out of city; Jesse Thornton was lynched in Luverne, Alabama, for a minor social infraction; and 16-yr-outdated Austin Callaway, a suspect within the assault of a white woman, was taken from jail in the course of the night and killed by six white males in LaGrange, Georgia. Studies find that generally, the KKK membership in these cities was from the stable, profitable center courses, with few members drawn from the elite or the working lessons. The KKK was a secret group; aside from a couple of high leaders, most members never identified as such and wore masks in public.