Lynching of Manse Waldrop

On December 30, 1887, in South Carolina, Manse Waldrop, a 35-year-old white man, was lynched by a mostly African-American mob. Waldrop had allegedly raped and murdered a 14-year-old African-American girl named Lula Sherman. Sherman is the victim at the center of the underlying alleged crime.

In 1888, three members of the lynch mob — William C. Williams, Harrison Heyward, and Henry Bolton — were tried and convicted of murder for Waldrop's killing. The jury that convicted them recommended mercy for all three men. Despite this recommendation, Williams and Heyward were sentenced to death, while Bolton was granted a new trial. Executions for Williams and Heyward were scheduled for April 2.

In the months that followed, a large public campaign sought clemency for the convicted men. A total of 52 petitions, collectively signed by 3,000 white and Black South Carolinians, urged pardons. One petition, signed by a group of white residents, stated that although they opposed lynching in general, punishing Williams and Heyward would be unjust. Another petition asserted that Waldrop was guilty of the rape and murder of Sherman and had committed other rapes previously. Samuel Dibble, a white politician, publicly stated that he viewed lynching as a justifiable response to avenge rape, regardless of the race of those involved.

The trial judge, Joseph J. Norton, also petitioned on behalf of the convicted men. Norton explained that he had been legally bound to impose death sentences on Williams and Heyward following their conviction for premeditated murder, but he believed the jurors had not intended for the men to actually be executed and might have reached a different verdict had they anticipated their mercy recommendation would be disregarded.

South Carolina Governor John Peter Richardson III first granted reprieves to Williams and Heyward, then on April 15, 1889, pardoned all three men — Williams, Heyward, and Bolton. In his pardon statement, Richardson said he did not condone lynching and would not pardon a white man for lynching a Black person, but that it would be hypocritical to punish these men when white lynch mobs had frequently gone unpunished. He stated that the men had witnessed the law broken and lynchers go free on numerous occasions, and that if lynchers in other cases were allowed to go free, these men — whom he described as having acted in imitation of that pattern — should not be made to suffer for it.