Lynching of Henry Choate

Henry Choate, an 18-year-old African-American man, was lynched by a mob in Columbia, Tennessee, on November 13, 1927. Choate had traveled to Columbia on Armistice Day to visit his grandfather, Henry Clay Harlan, an 85-year-old man who had been born into slavery and lived several miles west of the city. During Choate's visit, 16-year-old Sarah Harlan, a white girl unrelated to Choate's grandfather, said she had been attacked by a young Black man. Maury County Sheriff Sam Wiley brought in bloodhounds, and Choate was arrested and jailed, even though Sarah Harlan told authorities she could not identify him as her attacker.

According to the account, the sheriff's wife, Mrs. Wiley, was warned by the jail's cook, Ella Gant, that a mob intended to kill Choate. Gant reportedly brought Choate cigarettes and told him to pray. When the mob arrived, Mrs. Wiley initially hid the jail keys and refused to hand Choate over, but after men began breaking down the jail door with a hammer and threatened to use dynamite, she surrendered the keys. A mob estimated at roughly 250 men removed Choate from the jail; he was struck with a hammer, then tied to a truck and dragged through the streets of Columbia to the county courthouse, where he was hanged from the building's second story. The courthouse was still decorated for Armistice Day at the time. During the lynching, Sarah Harlan's mother pleaded with the mob to spare Choate's life and allow the matter to proceed to trial.

Two weeks after the killing, a Maury County grand jury declined to file charges against any participants. The grand jury acknowledged that the lynching constituted a criminal offense but stated that witnesses were unable to positively identify individual perpetrators. No one is known to have been charged or convicted in connection with Choate's death.

The case drew renewed public attention in 2023 after the Maury County Courthouse — the site of Choate's hanging — was used as the primary filming location for a country music video. Critics characterized both the song's lyrics and the choice of filming location as racially charged, and the video was subsequently pulled from a major music television network. Contemporaneous coverage of this renewed attention was published by The Washington Post.