John Dykes
John Dykes was the postmaster at Greenhead in Washington County, Florida, according to the Pensacola Journal, and was being held in the jail at Vernon. The Pensacola Journal reported that early on Sunday, April 16, 1916, fifteen or twenty men confronted the deputies guarding the jail, demanded the keys, and took him from his cell, and that the jailer surrendered the keys before the men shot him about fifty yards from the building. The Montgomery Advertiser and the Birmingham Age-Herald reported only that a mob overpowered the jailer and killed him, without details of how he was taken. The Hazard Herald, under the name John Dukes, described a jail in Bonifay and a hanging from a tree, an account that conflicts with the others on both the place and the method.
Cause of death, as reported: Taken from custody and lynched. A mob took John Dykes from the jail at Greenhead, Florida, overpowered the jailer and lynched him, according to press reports; one account says the jailer surrendered the keys at Vernon.
Reported by: Associated Press reports (reporters).