Lynching of John West

John West was a 50-year-old African-American man born in Emporia, Kansas, who had moved to Hope, Arkansas approximately two weeks before his death. Contemporary descriptions noted he was short in stature, weighed about 165 pounds, and wore a goatee-style beard. West worked for the Kaw Paving Company, which was performing street paving work in Hope, Arkansas, alongside a white co-worker, Andrew Worthing.

According to accounts of the case, a fight broke out between West and Worthing over the crew's shared drinking cup and a statement West made asserting he was as good as any white worker. During the altercation, West struck Worthing with a sledgehammer, though Worthing was reportedly "not dangerously injured." Both men were arrested and brought before a local magistrate, who fined them for disturbing the peace. As word of the fight spread through the town, West was warned to leave. He purchased a train ticket to Texarkana, Arkansas, roughly 31 miles away, and boarded Missouri Pacific train No. 35 at 1:45 p.m. on July 28, 1922.

The train had traveled about five miles when a crowd of white men forced West off at the Guernsey train station and took him into a grove approximately 100 yards from the station. Witnesses in the area heard a series of gunshots, and West's body was subsequently found riddled with bullet holes. The Little River News, a contemporary newspaper, reported that West was probably "shot after he flourished a pistol and threatened the men who intended only to whip him," and noted that a .38 caliber revolver was found in his left hand.

The lynching was documented by the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary as the 41st of 61 recorded lynchings in the United States during 1922, cited in hearings held in 1926 regarding federal anti-lynching legislation.

No individuals have been identified as charged or convicted in connection with West's killing; the perpetrators were described in contemporary sources only as an unidentified "group of men" or "crowd of white men," and no named suspects appear in the available record.

John West's death is memorialized at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, which opened on April 26, 2018. The memorial features a Memorial Corridor displaying 805 hanging steel rectangles, each representing a U.S. county where a documented lynching occurred, listing the names of those killed. The memorial's organizers have expressed hope that communities such as Hempstead County, Arkansas, where West was lynched, will claim corresponding monuments for local installation.