A "Legalized" Triple Lynching

After allegedly murdering two police officers, three black men are brutally beaten and lynched by a mob minutes after their trial ends.

Union City, Tenn., Nove. 25. - Tiptonville, bordering on Reeifoot lake, which recently has been the scene of many stirring incidents, witnessed the “legalized” lynching of three negroes who were arrested for murdering on Sunday Special Deputy Sheriff Richard Burruss and wounding John Hall, a deputy sheriff. The execution of the negroes was given a semblance of legality by a hurried “trial,” arranged with the understanding that the men would be condemned to death as soon as the “trial” was over. The negroes lynched were Marshall Edward and James Stineback. These brothers created a disturbance at a religious meeting near Tiptonville on Saturday night. When Officers Burruss and Hall attempted to arrest them the negroes shot the officer and escaped. It was barely daylight Sunday morning before a posse of citizens from Tiptonville and surrounding towns were in pursuit of the negroes, but the trio eluded the pursuers until Thursday, when they were surrounded and captured in a swamp near Ridgely. The negroes, covered by a hundred guns, were quickly placed in jail at Tiptonville. The negroes when arrested had two guns, but were out of ammunition. The news of the capture spread rapidly, and in addition to the several hundred captors men began arriving by every road. Soon the jail was surrounded by a mob which had no hesitancy in threatening a lynching. Prominent citizens begge the mob to let the law take its course and promised that full justice would be done the three black men. The mob, however, was restless and it was apparent that delay would not be brooked. As a last resort, S.J. Caldwell and Sheriff Haynes went before Justice Lee Davis and explained the situation. Justice Davis at once agreed to “open court,” “summon a jury” and allow the negroes, after “all available evidence” was heard, to be “duly sentenced to death.” Meantime Governor Patterson was advised by telephone of the situation, and he ordered a company of militia to proceed from Union City with all haste to Tiptonville, seize the three negroes and conduct them to a place of safety. The troops started at once, but failed to arrive in time to prevent the lynching. At the “trial” all of the evidence of those who had seen the killing was heard and in an incredibly short time the “case” was given to the “jury,” which in a few minutes “returned a verdict of guilty” and “fixed the penalty at death.” The “sentence” had barely been passed on the three negroes, when the mob, with a whoop and a yell, swarmed into the courtroom, seized the prisoners, rushed them to a large tree near the edge of town and “duly executed the sentence of death” by hanging them, firing volley after volley into the air as the bodies were drawn up from the earth.

“A "Legalized" Triple Lynching,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed December 7, 2025, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/757.