1917: Lation Scott lynched

On this date in 1917, 24-year-old black farmhand Lation (or Ligon) Scott died a horrible death in Dyersburg, Tennessee.

For the two years prior to his extrajudicial “execution” by a lynch mob, Scott had worked as a farmhand for a white family, doing the farm chores while the husband worked at his job in Dyersburg.

He got on well with the family and was fond of the two children. He seemed like an ordinary enough man and a good worker, according to the NAACP journal The Crisis:

Accounts as to his intelligence vary widely. One report asserts that he was almost half-witted. Others attribute to him the intelligence of the average country Negro… He had the reputation of being a splendid hand at doing general housework, or “spring-cleaning,” and…had done this sort of work for a prominent woman of Dyersburg. She states that she was alone in the house with him for two days.

In addition to farming and the doing of odd jobs, he was a preacher. On November 22, 1917, however, he allegedly raped the farmer’s wife while her husband was at work. He threatened to kill her if she reported what he had done. He then fled, leaving his victim bound and gagged inside the farmhouse......

I know that I have posted other execution anecdotes that have been about black men who were executed, after being convicted in a court, for raping a white woman, particularly in the South. This occurred in some cases after 1917 and up to the 1940’s, I believe.

So it is not as if there wasn’t a good chance for justice to be served in this case and, hence, no need for what took place.

Whether you agree with execution for rape or not and although it seemed to go in one direction most often with people of race who raped people of another being the most often executed, Lation Scott stood a good chance of being convicted and executed.

Not to sound as if I am trying to downplay the rape, but it was likely not something Lation had thought about doing and plotting and might have been more of a impulse. And he didn’t kill the woman.

Contrast that to Fauci, Bill Gates, the heads of Pfizer and Moderna, the governors who put Covid patients in nursing homes instead of the hospital ships they could have used, doctors who stood silent when they suspected Covid treatment protocols were killing people, hospital administrators who might have been told this by senior doctors but only could see dollar signs as the reimbursements rolled in, etc.

I can’t help feeling that in a truly just society with a majority of good people, that by now there would be enough rage and demand for justice that is not coming through the courts, well, you get the idea.

This article cites an NAACP publication about the man’s horrific rape of a woman.

However, the following Wikipedia article leaves that out and treats the rapist as the victim who was lynched for no reason: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyersburg,_Tennessee

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