Died in jail or a lockup
Erastus Brown
Erastus Brown, a Black man, was being held in the jail at Union, Missouri, when a mob took him from the building early on July 10, 1897, and hanged him from a willow tree, according to the El Paso Daily Herald. That paper reported that the judge and sheriff urged the crowd to stop, but the crowd broke in anyway. The Richmond Planet, writing two weeks later, said the mob was made up of men from the Villa Ridge neighborhood and did not say whether jail staff resisted. The accounts differ on how the crowd got in and on whether officials tried to hold it back.
Cause of death, as reported: Taken from custody and lynched
Reported by: news reports.