Lynching of Roosevelt Townes and Robert McDaniels

On December 30, 1936, George Sam Windham, a 40-year-old grocer near Duck Hill, Mississippi, was shot and killed in his store; his cash register had reportedly been robbed. Montgomery County Sheriff Edgar E. Wright led an investigation that, over several weeks, resulted in the detention without charge of at least eight Black men, several held for weeks despite no direct evidence connecting them to the crime. Sheriff Wright eventually focused suspicion on Roosevelt "Red" Townes, a 25-year-old Black sharecropper who had reportedly escaped from the Grenada County jail shortly before the murder. Townes fled after being confronted by his plantation overseer over money, becoming a fugitive. A $500 reward was offered, and on January 19, 1937, Townes was officially accused of Windham's murder based on what officers described as circumstantial evidence; no murder weapon was ever recovered and no named accomplice was ever produced.

Townes was arrested in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 2, 1937, and a confession was attributed to him by Memphis police. He was transferred to Jackson and then to the Winona county jail. Robert "Bootjack" McDaniels, an acquaintance of Townes, was also arrested, though authorities reported no evidence or stated reason for his arrest. Both men were retroactively indicted as of December 30, 1936, and on April 13, 1937, were brought before Judge John Allen in Winona, where they pleaded not guilty. Minutes after the arraignment, as Sheriff Wright and four deputies attempted to remove the handcuffed men from the courthouse, a mob estimated at about 100 people confronted them and took Townes and McDaniels away. Wright and his deputies claimed they were overpowered, though none had drawn their weapons.

The two men were placed on a bus and driven to a wooded area near Windham's store, followed by a growing procession of cars, with the crowd at the lynching site later estimated at around 500 people, including women and children. Both men were chained to trees and tortured with a blowtorch while being pressed to confess. Under torture, Townes and McDaniels each implicated the other; McDaniels was then shot to death, including a fatal shot to the head. Townes continued to maintain his innocence but was eventually doused in gasoline and burned alive. A third man, referred to as "Shorty" Dorrah, was also seized, beaten, and forced to give a statement before being ordered to leave the state.

No one was ever charged with the killings of Townes and McDaniels. Sheriff Wright and his deputies said they could not identify any mob members, a claim publicly questioned by local newspapers. Governor Hugh L. White rescinded an order to send the National Guard once he determined the lynching was over, and later delegated the investigation to the same sheriff who had been present. A photograph taken shortly before Townes was set on fire, showing McDaniels' body chained to a tree, was published by Time and Life magazines on April 26, 1937 — the first lynching photograph published by the national press. The case drew national and international attention, including use by German propaganda outlets, and contributed to congressional debate over federal anti-lynching legislation, which passed the House but was blocked in the Senate. In 2022, the Emmett Till Antilynching Act made lynching a federal hate crime.