Chief Askew's Diary: April 9, 1930

A Black prisoner passes through on way to Atlanta for 'safekeeping'

In his diary today, Chief Askew wrote of a house that burned down on LaGrange Street, “almost a total loss.” He continued, “Officers from LaGrange, Ga brought a Negro through here this a.m. about 4 o’clock and carried him to the Atlanta Jail for safekeeping.”

The unspoken word here is “lynching.”

Paid subscribers can read on about this example of vigilante “justice” that was all too common in the United States, but especially in the South, from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries.

The picture postcard of the 1920 lynching of Lige Daniels in Centerville, Texas was accessed via Wikimedia Commons.