Many Black people were lynched across the South under accusation of murder. During this era of racial terror, mere suggestions of Black-on-white violence could provoke mob violence and lynching before the judicial system could or would act. The deep racial hostility permeating Southern society often served to focus suspicion on Black communities after a crime was discovered, whether or not there was evidence to support the suspicion, and accusations lodged against Black people were rarely subject to serious scrutiny. Here, suspicion immediately fell on Mr. Miller and led to his death despite available evidence pointing to a different culprit.
Statements from Mr. Miller’s wife and from law enforcement witnesses indicated that Mr. Miller was not even in Kentucky on the date the girls were killed, and multiple eyewitnesses identified the girls’ killer as a white man. Even the girls’ father was unconvinced of Mr. Miller’s guilt. Only one person implicated Mr. Miller, but he originally told police that the person he saw was a white man—as did other
witnesses. The witness who implicated Mr. Miller changed his statement only after the county sheriff threatened to charge him as an accomplice if he did not do so. This same sheriff handed Mr. Miller over to a crowd of thousands of white citizens to be lynched. Though charged with protecting the people in their custody, law enforcement almost never used their authority to resist white crowds intent on killing Black people and were instead often complicit in lynchings. In a system where law enforcement did little to protect Black communities, white crowds acted as judge, jury, and executioner.
The mob was determined to ensure Mr. Miller’s death was brutal. Reasoning that immediate lynching by rope would be “too humane,” the white mob fastened a chain weighing over 100 pounds around Mr. Miller’s neck and forced him to walk through town until he fainted from exhaustion.
“I am standing here an innocent man among excited men who do not propose to let the law take its course. I have committed no crime to be deprived of my liberty or life. I am not guilty,” Mr. Miller reportedly said as he was led to his death. “Burning and torture here last but a little while, but if I die with a lie on my soul, I shall be tortured forever. I am innocent.” These were his last recorded words.
Around 3 pm, the heavily armed mob hanged Mr. Miller from a telephone pole, shot hundreds of bullets into his body, then left his corpse hanging from the pole for hours. Afterward, white people cut off his fingers, toes, and ears as “souvenirs” and then burned Mr. Miller’s body in a public fire.
White people used racial terror lynching as a tool to instill fear in the broader Black community. Lynchings were not merely retaliation for a specific crime. Rather, lynchings were meant to send a broader message to the entire Black community of how quickly and easily they could be killed with no protection from the authorities. Following Mr. Miller’s brutal lynching, armed white residents began organizing to force Black residents to leave the area; law enforcement arrested no one for participating in Mr. Miller’s lynching and made no effort to investigate a white suspect in the girls’ killings, but continued to indiscriminately arrest local Black people on unfounded charges.
Within days, famed journalist and anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells traveled to Kentucky to investigate Mr. Miller’s lynching. Her account later published in the Chicago Inter Ocean newspaper detailed the cruel brutality of the lynching, the heartbreak of Mr. Miller’s widow, and the racism that allowed lynching in America to continue.
Thus perished another of the many victims of lynch law, but it is the honest, sober belief of many who witnessed the scene, that an innocent man has been barbarously and shockingly put to death in the glare of the nineteenth century civilization, by those who profess to believe in Christianity, law, and order. These and similar deeds of violence are committed under the protection of the American flag and mostly upon the descendants of the negro race. Had Miller been ever so guilty under the laws, he was entitled to a fair trial. But there is absolutely no proof of his guilt. His widow says he left his home in Springfield July 1 to hunt work. She had a letter from him July 5, mailed at Cairo; when next she heard from him he had been murdered. The poor woman seems to have lost her mind since her trouble, and during her first frenzy destroyed this letter, the only clue by which her husband could be traced. She seems incapable of answering questions intelligently and lives in a state of nervous excitement.Six white Mississippi police officers tortured two innocent Black men using a sex toy, Tasers and a sword in an hours-long attack that ended with one man shot through the mouth and neck, the US Department of Justice said Thursday.
The brutal assault, and its subsequent cover-up in which the men left one victim bleeding as they hid evidence of their crimes, is the latest race-tinged stain on US policing.
“The defendants in this case tortured and inflicted unspeakable harm on their victims, egregiously violated the civil rights of citizens who they were supposed to protect, and shamefully betrayed the oath they swore as law enforcement officers,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Five now-former members of Mississippi’s Rankin County Sheriff’s Department and one former member of the Richland Police Department pleaded guilty Thursday to multiple charges including civil rights conspiracy, deprivation of rights under color of law and obstruction of justice.
All six acknowledged that while responding to a report of suspicious activity on January 24 this year, they kicked in a door at a house and began a sustained and unprovoked attack on two Black men there.
They handcuffed the men and racially abused them, warning them to “stay out of Rankin County,” the DoJ said.
“The defendants punched and kicked the men, tased them 17 times, forced them to ingest liquids, and assaulted them with a dildo,” a press release said.
They also hit one man multiple times with a metal sword and a wooden kitchen implement, the DoJ said.
Deputy Hunter Elward, 31, removed a bullet from the chamber of his gun and forced his weapon into one man’s mouth before pulling the trigger.
“Elward racked the slide, intending to dry-fire a second time. When Elward pulled the trigger, the gun discharged. The bullet lacerated (the victim’s) tongue, broke his jaw and exited out of his neck,” the DoJ said.
As their critically injured victim lay bleeding, the men set about planting evidence to justify their actions.
“Remarkably, the victim survived the shooting even though these defendants left him lying on the floor gushing blood for a considerable amount of time... because they were too busy developing a false story to try and cover up their misconduct,” prosecutor Kristen Clarke told reporters.
“The actions of these defendants not only caused significant physical, emotional and psychological harm to the victims, but also caused harm to the entire community, who feel they cannot trust the police officers who are supposed to serve them and leaving other police officers to try to mend the communal wounds inflicted by these defendants,” said Clarke.
“This trauma is magnified because the misconduct was fueled by racial bias and hatred.”
Elward, Brett McAlpin, 52, Christian Dedmon, 28, Jeffrey Middleton, 46, Daniel Opdyke, 27 and Joshua Hartfield, 31, pleaded guilty to all charges against them.
Dedmon, Elward, and Opdyke also pleaded guilty to three other felony charges stemming from another episode of brutality against a white man in December.
All six are due to be sentenced November 14.
