Richard Smith
Richard Smith, a 20-year-old Black man, was held in the Amite City jail in Tangipahoa Parish, Louisiana, in late December 1879. According to the St. Tammany Farmer, a masked, mounted mob of about fifty men took him and three other men from the jail on the night of December 28 and hanged them from a tree by the roadside, firing into the bodies of three of them. The paper reported that the sheriff had no warning of the mob and was forced to hand over the keys. Another paper, the Weekly Clarion, reported that the bodies were riddled with bullets, and the accounts of who fired and how the mob got in do not fully agree.
Cause of death, as reported: Taken from custody and lynched. The St. Tammany Farmer reported that a masked, mounted mob took Richard Smith from the Amite City jail on December 28, 1879, hanged him from a tree by the roadside and fired into the bodies of three of the men, and that the sheriff was forced to hand over the keys.
Reported by: St. Tammany Farmer (reporters).