A Colored Man Lynched

A mob of black men take a black man from jail with no resistance and lynch him before he is able to go on trial.

Springfield, Ky., Aug. 26 – A mob composed of about a dozen colored men took Harrison Lewis (colored) from the jail here last night, and handed him to a tree in the court-house yard. About 11 o’clock they attacked the jail, and demanded the keys of Jailer Smith, who, having been warned of their approach escaped out of the back door with the keys. The mob, nothing daunted, repaired to a neighboring blacksmith shop, procured a sledgehammer and other tools, and began battering down the doors. It took three hours hard work to reach their victim, but their determination never wavered in the least, and promptly at 2 o’clock this morning he was hanged.
No resistance was offered the mob, and quite a number of people were on the street while they were at work but were afraid to interfere. The crime for which Lewis was lynched was most cowardly murder. Last Friday night he went to the house of Joe Brooks, also colored, looking for another Negro, on account of his (Lewis’) paramour. Brooks told him that his man was not there, whereupon Lewis fired upon Brooks with a shotgun, killing him instantly.

“A Colored Man Lynched,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed February 19, 2026, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/1449.