1919 lynching in Montgomery, Alabama

In August or September 1919, Miles Phifer (also recorded as Relius Phifer) and Robert Crosky, both Army veterans, were arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, over allegations that they had assaulted two white women in separate incidents. Contemporary reporting from The Gadsden Daily Times-News stated that the two men had confessed to the assaults. As a mob began to form, a concerned citizen alerted Alabama's Governor Thomas Kilby to the danger of a lynching. Kilby ordered that Phifer and Crosky be transferred to the jail in nearby Wetumpka for their safety.

On September 29, 1919, while the sheriff and his deputies were transporting the two men, they were stopped by a white mob of about 25 masked men. The deputies did not intervene as the mob pulled Phifer and Crosky from the vehicle. The men were taken roughly five miles outside of town, told to run, and were then shot as they attempted to flee. Crosky was killed instantly; Phifer survived for several hours before dying. Some contemporary accounts describe both men as discharged soldiers, and note that Phifer was still wearing his uniform at the time he was killed, while other, later sources identify only Crosky as a veteran.

The following day, September 30, 1919, at approximately 2 a.m., a separate lynching occurred in Montgomery when Willie Temple was taken from a hospital and lynched after being accused of fatally wounding a police officer identified as Barbaree. This second lynching is documented as a related but distinct incident occurring one day after the killings of Phifer and Crosky.

These lynchings occurred during a period of widespread racial violence across the United States known as the Red Summer of 1919, during which attacks on Black communities and related civil unrest spread to more than three dozen cities and counties nationwide. In most instances, white mobs attacked African American neighborhoods; in some cities, including Chicago and Washington, D.C., Black community groups resisted. The most severe loss of life during this period occurred in rural areas, such as during the Elaine race riot in Arkansas, where estimates range from 100 to 240 Black deaths and five white deaths. Other major incidents of the Red Summer included the Chicago race riot and the Washington, D.C. race riot, which resulted in 38 and 39 deaths respectively, along with extensive injuries and property damage.