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Books by Walter White
The Fire in the Flint (novel,1924)
/
Flight
(novel,1926) /
Rope
and Faggot: A Biography of Judge Lynch (1929)
How far the Promised Land?
955) /
A
Man Called White (autobiography,1948).
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Books on
Lynching & Racial Violence
The Chronological
History of the Negro in America (1969) /
Strain of
Violence: Historical Studies of American Violence and Vigilantism (1975)
But There Was
No Peace: The
Role of Violence in the Politics of Reconstruction
(1984) /
Lynch Law
( 1905) /
An American Dilemma
(1944)
The Crucible of Race:
Black-White Relations in the American South Since Emancipation
(1984) /
Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.
(1989)
Rope and Faggot
( 1929) /
The Tragedy of
Lynching (1933) /
Race Riot in East St,
Louis (1964) /
Urban Racial Violence
(1976)
/
Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders
(1968) /
Violence
in America (1969) A Report
from Walter White
on the Lynching of Claude Neal
The 45th Mob Victim Since FDR Entered the
White House
On October 19, 1934, Claude Neal, 23, of
Greenwood, Florida was arrested by Deputy Sheriff J.P. Couliette
for the murder of Lola Cannidy, 20, also of Greenwood, Florida.
Neal, when arrested, was working on a peanut farm belonging to
John Green. He was taken in custody with another man whom
investigating officers believed to be involved in the murder to
the woods and questioned.
It is alleged that a confession was wrung
from Neal and that a confession was wrung from Neal and that he
assumed entire responsibility for the crime. Sheriff W. F.
Chambliss, of Jackson county, who was at the Cannidy home at the
time of the arrest, was apparently aware of the lynching spirit
which was beginning to rise throughout the little farming
community, and ordered Neal to be taken to Chipley, Florida, for
safe keeping, a distance of about 20 miles. With Neal were
arrested his mother, Annie Smith and his aunt, Sallie Smith.
| The Lynching of Claude Neal Claude Neal was lynched in a lonely spot
about four miles from Greenswood, Florida, scene of the recent
crime. After Neal was taken from the jail at Brewton, Alabama
(moved there supposedly for his protection), he was driven
approximately 200 miles over highway 231 leading into Marianna
and from there he was subjected to the most brutal and savage
torture imaginable. Neal was taken from the Brewton jail between
one and two o'clock Friday morning, October 26. he was in the
hands of the smaller lynching group composed of approximately
100 men from then until he was left in the road in front of the
Cannidy home late that same night. Neal was tortured for ten or
twelve hours. The original mob that took Neal from jail directed
"all of the niceties of a twentieth century lynching . . .
inflicted upon Neal." The word was passed all over
Northeastern Florida and southeastern Alabama that there was to
be a "lynching party to which all white people are
invited."
A member of the lynching party described the lynching in all
of its ghastliness, down tot he minutest detail: |
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After taking the nigger to the woods
about four miles from Greenwood, they cut off his penis.
He was made to eat it. They cut off his testicles
and made him eat them and say he liked it. . . .
Then they sliced his sides and
stomach with knives and every now and then somebody
would cut off a finger or toe. Red hot irons were used
on the nigger to burn him from top to bottom.
From time to time during the torture
a rope was tied around Neal's neck and he was pulled up
over a limb and held there until he almost choked to
death. Then he was let down and the torture began all
over again. After several hours of this unspeakable
torture, they decided just to kill him. |
Neal's body was tied to a rope on the rear of
an automobile and dragged over the highway to the Cannidy home.
Here a mob estimated to number somewhere between 3000 and 7000
people from eleven southern states was excitedly waiting his
arrival. When the car which was dragging Neal's body came in
front of the Cannidy home, a man who was riding the rear bumper
cut the rope.
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A woman came out of the Cannidy house
and drove a butcher knife into his heart. Then the crowd
came by and some kicked him and some drove their cars
over him. |
Men, women, and children were numbered in the
vast throng that came to witness the lynching. It is reported
from reliable sources that the little children, some of them
mere tots, who lived in the Greenwood neighborhood, waited with
sharpened sticks for the return of Neal's body and that when it
rolled in the dust on the road that awful night these little
children drove their weapons deep into the flesh of the dead
man.
The body, which by this time was horribly
mutilated, was taken to Marianna, a distance of ten or eleven
miles, where it was hung to a tree on the northeast corner of
the courthouse square. Pictures were taken of the mutilated form
and hundreds of photographs were sold for fifty cents each.
Scores of citizens viewed the body as it hung in the square. The
body was perfectly nude until the early morning when someone had
the decency to hang a burlap sack over the middle of the body.
The body was cut down about eight-thirty Saturday morning,
October 27, 1934.
Fingers and toes from Neal's body have been
exhibited as souvenirs in Marianna where one man offered to
divide the finger which he had with a friend as "a special
favor." Another man has one of the fingers preserved in
alcohol.
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