Omaha Race Riot of 1919 - Lynching

Lynching

Then three slips of paper were thrown from the fourth floor on the west side of the building. On one piece was scrawled: "The judge says he will give up Negro Brown. He is in dungeon. There are 100 white prisoners on the roof. Save them."

Another note read: "Come to the fourth floor of the building and we will hand the negro over to you."

The mob in the street shrieked its delight at the last message. Boys and young men placed firemen's ladders against the building. They mounted to the second story. One man had a heavy coil of new rope on his back. Another had a shotgun.

Two or three minutes after the unidentified athletes had climbed to the fourth floor, a mighty shout and a fusillade of shots were heard from the south side of the building.

Will Brown had been captured. A few minutes more and his lifeless body was hanging from a telephone post at Eighteenth and Harney Streets. Hundreds of revolvers and shotguns were fired at the corpse as it dangled in mid-air. Then, the rope was cut. Brown's body was tied to the rear end of an automobile. It was dragged through the streets to Seventeenth and Dodge Streets, four blocks away. The oil from red lanterns used as danger signals for street repairs was poured on the corpse. It was burned. Members of the mob hauled the charred remains through the business district for several hours.

Sheriff Clark said that Negro prisoners hurled Brown into the hands of the mob as its leaders approached the stairway leading to the county jail. Newspapers have quoted alleged leaders of the mob as saying that Brown was shoved at them through a blinding smoke by persons whom they could not see.