Colored People Not Allowed There

White mobs hunt down black workers, forcing them to leave or die.

Paducah, Ky., November 17, - Four colored men were seriously wounded and five others sprinkled with buckshot last night by a mob of white men at Altoona, fifteen miles from here, on the Tennessee river. Fifteen colored men were engaged in cutting timber for the Standard Oil Company. They had been ordered to leave, being told that no Negro was allowed to stop there. John Keeber, the foreman, decided that there was no danger of violence, and the colored men were sitting around an old smokehouse, when a mob of fifty men swooped down upon them and began firing. Some of the colored men ran into the woods, and others sought refuge in the house with the foreman.
The mob then started to burn the house but the foreman sued for peace, and the colored men were given twenty-five minutes in which to leave. The seriously wounded are: Smith, foreman; Mitch, Clark, John Boyd, Zens Jenkins. They were brought to his city. No effort has been made to apprehend the mob. Not a colored man can be found for miles around Altoona to-day. Several men have been killed by mobs in this neighborhood before.

“Colored People Not Allowed There,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed May 12, 2025, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/1580.