Lynching of Jake Davis

Jake "Shake" Davis was a 62-year-old African-American man living in Miller County, Georgia. Sourced to reporting from the era, Davis was described by local media as well-known in the community. He was reported to have had a relationship with a 26-year-old white woman, Ethel Skittel, which resulted in the birth of a child. Interracial relationships between Black and white individuals were widely stigmatized and, in many U.S. states, illegal under laws that were not overturned until the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia.

When the Miller County community learned of the relationship between Davis and Skittel, a white mob formed, seized Davis, and hanged him on July 14, 1922. The United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary recorded this lynching as the 38th of 61 documented lynchings in the United States during 1922.

Following the killing, the local newspaper, the Miller County Liberal, published a statement indicating that "hundreds of the citizens throughout the county regret this lynching," and further reported that many in the community held the view that Ethel Skittel bore greater responsibility than Davis for the relationship that preceded his death. No individuals were identified, charged, or convicted in connection with the lynching, and the case remains formally unresolved in terms of legal accountability.

Davis's case is memorialized at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, which opened on April 26, 2018. The memorial's Memorial Corridor features 805 hanging steel rectangles, each representing a U.S. county where a documented lynching occurred, inscribed with the names of victims. Miller County, Georgia — the site of Davis's lynching — is among the counties represented, and the memorial has expressed hope that communities will claim corresponding steel monuments for local installation as part of a broader reckoning with this history.