Executed
George Sanford
George Sanford was baptized by immersion at the river's edge by a Black minister before he was hanged on July 9, 1880, on the bank of the Mississippi River near Osceola, Arkansas. He had been held in the Osceola jail, and the Memphis Daily Appeal reported that the execution was the first carried out by a sheriff of Mississippi County, watched by a crowd it estimated at about three thousand. On the scaffold a minister prayed, another urged the young men of his race to live rightly, and the men present joined in singing a hymn. The paper's headline said the rope slipped during the hanging.
Cause of death, as reported: Executed by the state
Reported by: Memphis Daily Appeal (reporters).