Chisolm massacre

On April 29, 1877, in Kemper County, Mississippi, a mob of approximately 300 Ku Klux Klan members attacked a local jail and killed six people. Among the dead were William Chisolm, a judge and former sheriff; his 14-year-old son, John Chisholm; his 19-year-old daughter, Cornelia Josephine Chisholm; his friend John Gilmer; and two other men, A. McClellan and David Rosser. The attack occurred less than a month after the formal end of the Reconstruction era.

William Chisolm had been accused of killing John Gully, a sheriff and member of the Democratic Party, and was being held in the local jail at the time of the attack. His son, daughter, and two friends were held alongside him in protective custody. According to the Yorkville Enquirer, Chisolm was a Republican Party candidate for a seat in the U.S. Congress at the time of the killings.

Southern newspapers largely applauded the lynching. The Yorkville Enquirer closed its report on the "Tragedy in Mississippi" by predicting that "other hangings will probably follow." Mississippi Governor John Marshall Stone declined to launch an investigation into the killings, and U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes did not comment on them. No one was convicted for the attack. The massacre has been characterized as one of several reprisal actions carried out in Mississippi in the period following the end of Reconstruction.

The underlying killing of Sheriff John Gully was later addressed separately from the massacre. A freedman named Walter Riley confessed to killing Gully and was executed for that murder on December 7, 1877. Riley consistently maintained that he alone was responsible for Gully's death. However, on the gallows he stated that he had obtained the gun used in the killing from a man named Hezzie Jack, described as a former waiting boy for Judge Chisolm, and that Hezzie had persuaded him to commit the murder. Contemporary newspapers questioned why Hezzie would have done so unless prompted by Judge Chisolm. Riley said that, as far as he knew, Chisolm and John Gilmer had no involvement in Gully's murder, though he could not rule out the possibility.

The case received contemporaneous national attention, including coverage by The New York Times. James Monroe Wells, a deputy revenue collector and U.S. Army veteran, wrote a book on the events titled The Chisolm Massacre: A Picture of "Home Rule" in Mississippi. His account and criticisms of local figures were later disputed by James Daniel Lynch, whose response, Kemper County Vindicated, and a Peep at Radical Rule in Mississippi, placed blame on Radical Republicans.