William Rice a Most Respectable Colored Man, and Porter for the Southern Hotel, Found Dead.

The body of William Rice, “a highly respected” black man, is found in Lawrenceville, Virginia. Evidence points to a white mob who “engaged in an altercation of some kind” with Rice on the night he was murdered.

William Rice a Most Respectable Colored Man, and Porter for the Southern Hotel, Found Dead.
Subsequent Developments Point Conclusively to the Fact of Foul Play.
[Lawrenceville, Va., Brunswick, Gazette.]
On the morning of February 26th the body of William Rice, a highly respected colored man, who was employed as porter for the Southern Hotel, was found dead under the trestle work of the high railroad bridge that spans Rose creek, just east of and within the corporate limits of this town.
At the point where the body of the dead man was found a cross tie was missing, having perhaps been taken out of the purpose of repairing the bridge and was not at once replaced. This circumstance at first led to the belief that Rice, in attempting to cross the bridge the night before without knowledge of the fact that one of the cross ties was missing, fell through to the ground below, a distance of some forty or fifty feet, and was killed by the fall. Subsequent developments, however, speedily changed this belief into the conviction that his death was not the result of the accident, but of foul play.
On the night before the colored people of the town and vicinity, who are members of a charitable society known as “True Reformers,” held their regular monthly meeting in a hall on the street leading from Main to where the country road crosses Rose creek. This meeting was largely attended and ...illegible… returning to their homes had to pass up Main street, when on that street they saw at a point not far from the northwest corner of the courthouse square several white men engaged in an altercation of some kind with the man Rice. An examination of the ground in the vicinity of that point disclosed a large pool of blood, and a lock of human hair that had been torn from the head. At another point nearby the impression of a man’s form was found in the mud. No other traces of evidences were found until the steps were reached that lead from the street to the railroad track below at the bridge near the residence of Col. N. L. Clarborne, where drops of blood were found. Further on down the railroad track in the direction of where the dead body was found, Rice’s shirt collar was discovered besmeared with blood. Further on revealed a spot near the old Morrison burying ground where Rice’s shirt was taken from his back, and also the remnants of several sticks called switches, cut from the near by shrubbery that from all appearances had been used without mercy on his bare back…

“William Rice a Most Respectable Colored Man, and Porter for the Southern Hotel, Found Dead.,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed December 7, 2025, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/578.