Len Patterson
Len Patterson, a Black man, was held in the custody of Deputy Sheriff Frank Mills near Marianna, Arkansas, during unrest among cotton pickers in late September 1891. A news dispatch datelined Mataranxa reports that a mob took him from Mills and lynched him on the night of Wednesday, September 30. A Memphis dispatch printed in the Oskaloosa Herald gives a different account: that he had been wounded and chained aboard the steamboat Lee, that Mills surrendered him when armed men came aboard at Hackley's landing, and that he was shot from the boat on October 7. A sheriff's posse, as reported in the press, said that claims that nine men had been lynched were untrue and that only Patterson and Ed Peyton were killed.
Cause of death, as reported: Taken from custody and lynched (disputed). A New Orleans dispatch says a mob hanged him after taking him from deputies, while a Memphis dispatch says he was shot by rifle fire from a mob on a steamboat, so accounts differ on how he died.
Reported by: Marianna Index (reprinted in The Forrest City Times) (reporters); New Orleans dispatch citing a Helena (Ark.) special report (reporters); Memphis dispatch as printed in The Oskaloosa Herald (reporters); news dispatch datelined Mataranxa, Ark. (reporters); Sheriff Berrick and a posse (the agency that held him).