Died in custody
Tom Ranston
Tom Ranston was one of four Black men who, according to a Mobile dispatch published in the Santa Fe New Mexican, were lynched by a mob of about thirty men at Van Cleave, Mississippi, on the night of March 10, 1908. The dispatch says he was being taken to jail in the custody of a Jackson County deputy sheriff when the mob overtook the group and took them from him. The men were hanged from trees by the roadside.
Cause of death, as reported: Taken from custody and lynched
Reported by: Mobile dispatch (reporters).