Hanged Two Hours After Crime

An innocent black man is hanged, and Mitchell notes that "a race war is threatened."

Gus McArdle, a white bartender, was shot and killed last night, and in less than two hours his supposed murdered, George Wells, a Negro miner from Scammon, was swinging to a telegraph pole, the victim of a mob which had forcibly taken him from a jail.
Earlier in the evening McArdle and Wells had some words in the saloon, after which the negro left. Shortly afterwards a shot was fired from across the street, the bullet killing McArdle. Wells was arrested on suspicion and lodged in jail. A determined mob formed quickly and marched to the jail. Securing Wells without much trouble, they dragged the frightened Negro from the building, and strung him up to the nearest telephone pole. Before the rope was placed about his neck Wells admitted he was with the man who shot McArdle, but denied that he had done the shooting.
Intense excitement prevails, and a race war is threatened.

“Hanged Two Hours After Crime,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed May 12, 2025, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/1743.