May 18, 1889

During a school board election in St. Francis County, Americus M. Neely—a black Republican politician and editor of Forrest City’s black newspaper—got into a fight with a white man near the polls. When he approached the former sheriff, Captain John Parham, for protection, Marshal F. M. Folbre interfered. Parham’s son Thomas saw his father and the marshal engaged in heated conversation and shot the marshal in the head. Before dying, Folbre shot Thomas Parham dead. Sheriff D. M. Wilson arrived on the scene and was killed by an unknown assailant. Despite Neely’s innocence in any of the deaths, armed mobs raged through town in search of Neely—finally riddling him with bullets the following morning. Newspapers called the events the “Forrest City Riot.”