Green (Lynching of)

On June 24, 1877, an African-American man identified only as Green was shot to death in Lonoke County after being arrested for his alleged participation in the murders of several members of the Eagle family in 1874.

According to reports, a constable out searching for a suspect in an assault on a local woman came across Green and took him to the office of the justice of the peace, T. A. Beard. During the night, he was housed there under guard while authorities waited for a train to take him to Little Rock (Pulaski County). At 11:00 p.m. on the night of June 24, Green was sleeping on the floor of the office while Beard slept in a nearby room and three guards kept watch on the porch. Three masked men approached the guards and told them to leave. One member of the mob then entered the house, “placed his gun against the body of the sleeping negro, and discharged the contents into his body.” Green was then shot several more times, killing him.

Beard, hearing the first shot, ran into the room where Green was being kept. The killers, who were by this time outside, shot him through the window, severely wounding him in the arm and side. Although it was feared at first that Beard would die, additional reports indicated that he would survive. The Arkansas Gazette expressed its hope that Governor William Read Miller would take swift action to find the killers, opining: “The good people of Lonoke [County] will no doubt render every assistance in ferreting out and hunting down the men who would inflict a lasting stigma on their fair name. Mob violence like this is the worst foe to society…let the people of Lonoke rise as one man to wipe away the foul stain from the name of their county.”

For additional information:
“Bloody Work.” Memphis Daily Appeal, June 26,1877, p. 1.

“Lynch Law and Murder at Lonoke.” Daily Arkansas Gazette, June 26, 1877, p. 4.

Nancy Snell Griffith
Davidson, North Carolina