“Nigger!” the cop yelled before knocking twenty-six-year-old Jesse Thornton to the ground. The cop, Doris Rhodes, arrested Thornton and lured him to the city jail, where a mob of white men awaited.
Why was this happening?
Earlier that day, when Thornton passed by Rhodes, he didn’t address him as “mister.” The cop was infuriated that a Black man had such a nerve. But when Rhodes demanded Thornton to correct himself, he refused.
Things only got worse.
Once in jail, Mr. Thornton managed to escape, fleeing only a short distance before the mob caught up with him. Things got bloody as they fired countless gunshots and pelted him with bricks, bats, and stones.
A week later, a local fisherman pulled Thornton’s decomposing body from the river.
A local NAACP leader, Dr. Charles A.J. McPherson, wrote an extensive report on the lynching, and a young Thurgood Marshall took the information to the Department of Justice and demanded an investigation. Still, no one was ever held accountable for Jesse Thornton’s murder.
Today, whites and this rotten criminal legal system STILL conspire to kill our people.
We deserve to live full lives without the threat of white supremacy looming over our heads. We must keep fighting for and working together to imagine a new world because this anti-Black one ain’t it.