Lynching of Josh Shorter

Josh Shorter was an African-American man who was killed by a mob on the afternoon of Wednesday, June 8, 1881, in or near Eufaula, Alabama, in the area between Eufaula and Georgetown, Georgia. Contemporary newspaper reporting from the period frames the killing as a response to an accusation that Shorter had committed an assault against a twelve-year-old white girl described in the press as "respectable."

According to a report published in The Weekly News and Advertiser, a Georgia newspaper, on June 18, 1881, a special telegram from Eufaula dated June 9 stated that the alleged assault occurred near the city on Wednesday afternoon. The article reported that a "diligent pursuit by a large party" led to Shorter's capture across the river in Georgia. He was then reportedly taken back to the Alabama side, but when the local Sheriff attempted to take custody of him, a large crowd forced him back across the river into Georgia, where he was hanged from a tree limb located roughly midway between Eufaula and Georgetown.

A separate historical documentation source, the Legacy of Lynching project, records Shorter's death as occurring in Eufaula, describing the location as being on a riverbank approximately 200 yards above the city bridge.

No named individual is documented as having been identified, charged, or convicted in connection with Shorter's killing. The case remains historically documented as an extrajudicial killing consistent with the broader pattern of racial terror lynchings carried out in the American South during this period, in which mob action circumvented formal legal processes such as arrest, trial, and sentencing.