Lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith

Uncommon card · No. 148772

J. Thomas Shipp (March 1, 1911 – August 7, 1930) and Abraham S. Smith (October 14, 1910 – August 7, 1930) were two young African-American men who were murdered in a spectacle lynching by a group of thousands on August 7, 1930, in Marion, Indiana. They were taken out from their jail cells, beaten, and hanged from a tree in the county courthouse square. They had been arrested that night as suspects in the attack of a white couple. They were accused of robbing and murdering Claude Deeter, 24 years old, and raping his fiancée, Mary Ball, 18. A third African-American suspect, 16-year-old James Cameron, was also arrested and taken by the mob, but narrowly escaped the same fate. Just before he was going to be lynched, an unknown woman in the crowd claimed he was innocent, after which the mob returned him to the jail. In his memoirs, Cameron stated that Shipp and Smith had committed the murder, albeit the version of events were different from what the mob claimed. Cameron admitted to initially...

Read on Wikipedia · Image unknow author, Public domain