Boisey Long was accused of murdering a police officer. Terrified, his friends ran towards the jail he was held in. They could already hear a lynch mob forming in the distance.
Long escaped the mob, primarily made up of police and legal officials, but his friends weren’t so lucky.
On August 19th, 1916, Andrew McHenry, Bert Dennis, John Haskins, Mary Dennis, James Dennis, and Stella Young were lynched for helping Long escape.
Remembered as “The Newberry 6,” their murders remind us of an important fact about lynching.
Often we learn about Black men being killed for allegedly raping white women. In reality, however, our people were lynched for defying anti-Blackness.
At one point Alachua County – where the Newberry 6 were murdered – had the seventh largest slave population in Florida. After emancipation, Florida had one of the highest number of lynchings in America, mainly because whites wanted to steal property from those they lynched.
Historically many laws were designed to prohibit Black people rights to any form of ownership. Our legal system is rooted in this tradition.
Whether we’re defending our community or our property, like the Newberry 6, we must always defend what’s ours.