Lynching of George Tompkins

George Tompkins was born in 1902 and raised by his great-aunt and great-uncle, Fannie and Robert Smith, after being placed in their care as an infant. In 1920, he moved from Frankfort, Kentucky, to Indianapolis, where he and his family lived first on Colton Street and later on Holborn Street, both locations now part of the IUPUI campus. Tompkins worked at the Fairmount Glass Works.

On March 16, 1922, Tompkins was found dead in Riverside Park around noon. His body was bound to a tree by the neck with a length of rope, with his hands tied behind his back. Investigators noted dirt on his body suggesting he may have been dragged, and observed that four or five small limbs had been cut from the tree, apparently with a pen knife — a detail interpreted as evidence that those responsible for his death may have taken the limbs as souvenirs.

The Indianapolis Star's initial coverage described Tompkins as a lynching victim, and police investigators and the coroner were initially inclined to agree with that characterization. However, some detectives working the case suggested instead that Tompkins had died by suicide. Following an autopsy conducted on March 18, 1922, Deputy Coroner George R. Christian listed the cause of death as strangulation by hanging from the neck and officially ruled the death a suicide. No further investigation was undertaken by authorities at the time. Tompkins was buried at Floral Park Cemetery on the near west side of Indianapolis in a grave that remained unmarked for a century.

In 2022, the Indiana Remembrance Coalition, a group of Indianapolis community members working to address the city's history of lynching, took up Tompkins' case. On March 12, 2022, the coalition held a memorialization event during which Marion County Chief Deputy Coroner Alfie McGinty unveiled an updated death certificate listing Tompkins' manner of death as homicide rather than suicide. The event also included the dedication of a headstone at his previously unmarked grave.

On March 16, 2025, the Equal Justice Initiative unveiled a historical marker near the location in Riverside Park where Tompkins' body was found in 1922, further memorializing his death as a documented act of racial terror lynching.

This case remains formally closed as a homicide following the 2022 correction to the death certificate, though the identities of those responsible for Tompkins' death have not been established and no prosecution occurred.