Lynching of Zachariah Walker

Background

Between 1900 and 1910, Coatesville, Pennsylvania, saw growing populations of African Americans and foreign-born white immigrants. Segregation and ethnic hierarchy shaped the town, with US-born whites excluding immigrant workers from their residential areas, pushing those immigrants into closer proximity with the town's Black residents.

Death of Edgar Rice and Walker's Arrest

On August 12, 1911, Zachariah Walker, an African American resident of Coatesville, fired his handgun near a group of immigrant workers while intoxicated, intending to scare them. Edgar Rice, a police officer employed by Worth Brothers Steel, confronted Walker and threatened him with a club. Walker threatened retaliation, and both men drew guns. Walker fired first, shooting Rice twice; Rice died shortly afterward.

A search party formed to find Walker. A farm boy discovered him hiding in a barn but Walker drove off two search-party members at gunpoint. The following day, firefighters located Walker hiding in a tree. As they moved to apprehend him, Walker shot himself in the head in an apparent suicide attempt but survived and was taken into custody. A district attorney and two police officers later stated that Walker confessed, saying "I killed him easy."

The Lynching

On August 13, 1911, a mob of approximately 2,000 Coatesville residents gathered outside Coatesville Hospital, where Walker was recovering from his self-inflicted gunshot wound. The mob overwhelmed Walker's police guard, dragged him from the hospital while he remained chained to his bed, and burned him alive on a makeshift pyre. Afterward, souvenir hunters scavenged most of his remains. Some mob members collected charred remains in a box left at the hospital, labeled "Return to his friends."

Media and Public Response

The Coatesville Record reported that a large crowd watched the burning and that some collected Walker's charred bones afterward; the paper also interviewed Rice's widow, who expressed regret at not personally lighting the pyre. Newspapers outside Coatesville widely condemned the lynching. Former President Theodore Roosevelt publicly condemned lynching generally. The New York Evening Post expressed shock that such violence occurred in a Northern state, while the Atlanta Journal noted lynching was no longer solely a Southern practice. The Richmond Planet suggested African Americans arm themselves for protection.

Legal Response

Pennsylvania authorities investigated the lynching but were hampered by Coatesville residents who declined to cooperate. Reporter William Ellis observed that local sentiment appeared more hostile toward journalists than toward the lynch mob. About a month after Walker's death, the state indicted six men for murder; all were acquitted. Additional indicted defendants were also cleared. Attorney Wilmer W. MacElree led the defense. Pennsylvania Governor John K. Tener publicly called Coatesville residents a disgrace to the Commonwealth for participating in or enabling the killing.

Legacy

Historian William Ziglar noted the case became one of the era's most notorious lynchings due to its brutality and its occurrence in a state regarded as historically tolerant toward African Americans. The National Negro Educational Association, meeting in Denver, concluded that Black and white Americans lived under separate standards of justice. Walker was the last of eight documented lynching victims in Pennsylvania.