William Spain
Willie Spain, a 21-year-old Black man from North Carolina, was held in the jail at St. George in Dorchester County, South Carolina, in August 1906. According to the newspaper accounts, a posse of forty or fifty men went to the sheriff and obtained the jail keys, and the sheriff was said to have surrendered them after telegraphing the governor, whose order to stop the lynching arrived too late. The mob took him from the jail, hanged him from an oak tree and shot him. The accounts are from 1906 newspapers, and their details about how he came to be held and the accusation against him are not repeated here.
Cause of death, as reported: Taken from custody and lynched. According to the Associated Press report, a mob of about forty men took him from the St. George jail and hanged and shot him near an oak tree.
Reported by: Associated Press report (reporters); newspaper reports of the lynching.
News reports (7)
- The Montgomery Advertiser, August 24, 1906, page 1
- The Waxahachie Daily Light, August 24, 1906, page 3
- Daily Press, August 24, 1906, page 1
- Americus Times-Recorder, August 25, 1906, page 1
- Bryan Morning Eagle, August 25, 1906, page 1
- Gainesville Daily Sun, August 26, 1906, page 1
- The Tupelo Journal, August 31, 1906, page 6