Sam Hose

Sam Hose (c. 1875 - April 23, 1899) was an African American worker who was brutally tortured and executed by a lynch mob in Coweta County, Georgia.

Sam Hose, a.k.a. Sam Holt, was born Tom Wilkes in South Georgia near Marshallville (Macon County) around 1875. He grew up on a Macon County farm owned by the Jones family. His mother was a long time employee of the family. According to the Macon Telegraph (April 24, 1899) and the Houston Home Journal (April 27, 1899), Mr. Wilkes was accused of sexually assaulting an elderly black lady on the Jones farm in June 1897.

Wilkes fled Macon County and moved to Coweta County, Georgia where he assumed the name of Sam Hose. On April 12, 1899, Wilkes/Hose was accused of murdering his employer, Alfred Cranford, sexually assaulting his wife Mattie, severely injuring their infant son and robbing their house in Coweta County. The Newnan Times Herald and Advertiser reported the next day that “Hose snatched the baby from Mrs. Cranford’s arms and dashed him to the floor.” As a result of this alleged attack, the infant son, Clifford Alfred Cranford was blind in one eye for the remainder of his life. The following day, April 13, 1899, the Atlanta Constitution published lurid accounts of the murder and rape, predicting that Wilkes/Hose would be lynched when apprehended.

On April 19, 1899, Governor Allen D. Candler offered a reward of $500.00 for the capture of Wilkes/Hose. Coweta County and the town of Palmetto offered a reward of $250.00 each. On April 23, 1899, Wilkes/Hose was apprehended in Marshallville and returned by train to Coweta County.

A mob removed him from the train at gun point in Coweta County (Newnan, Georgia). Former Governor William Yates Atkinson and Judge Alvan Freeman pleaded with the crowd to release Wilkes/Hose to the custody of the authorities. Ignoring their pleas, the crowd marched northward toward the Cranford home place. The lynch mob grew larger as it went reaching numbers estimated to be as high as 2000 individuals. Once news of the capture reached Atlanta large crowds boarded trains to Newnan. Mistakenly believing that these trains were loaded with troops, the mob stopped just North of Newnan and went about their barbaric task. Newspapers reported that Wilkes/Hose ears, fingers and genitals were severed. The skin from his face was removed and his body was doused with kerosene. He was tied to a tree and burned alive. Reportedly, some members of the mob cut off pieces of his dead body as souvenirs. According to Philip Dray's "At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America" the noted civil rights leader and scholar W. E. B. DuBois who lived in Atlanta at the time was on his way to a scheduled meeting with Atlanta Constitution editor Joel Chandler Harris to discuss the lynching when he was informed that Hose's knuckles were for sale in a grocery store on the road on which he was walking. He sadly turned around and did not meet with Harris after learning this.

The inhumane actions of the lynch mob were condemned in most of the United States and Europe. A group of prominent citizens in Chicago, led by journalist and activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett, hired a detective to investigate the Wilkes/Hose lynching. The detective was named Louis P. Le Vin. Mr. Levin’s entire report was published in Chapter IV of the Ida B. Wells-Barnett article “Lynch Law in Georgia.”

Mr. Le Vin stated that he spent over one week in his investigation. He concluded that Wilkes/Hose acted in self defense and the rape allegation was added to incite a lynching. Mr. Le Vin stated that his conclusions were gathered from interviews with “persons he met in Griffin, Newman (sic) Atlanta and the vicinity.” He does not provide the name of any individual who provided him his information, although this could have been due their fear of speaking out publicly for fear of reprisal. He stated that he was unable to speak to Mattie Cranford because she “was still suffering from the awful shock.” Mr. Le Vin’s report stated: “that Wilkes killed Cranford there is no doubt, but under what circumstances can never be proven.” Hose's contention had been that the killing was in self defense after an argument with Cranford turned violent. Le Vin concluded his report with the statement, "I made my way home thouroughly convinced that a Negro's life is a very cheap thing in Georgia."

On June 6, 1899, The Salt Lake Broad AX newspaper in Utah, printed Levin’s report and mistakenly attributed it to Mattie Cranford.

This has resulted in numerous books and articles incorrectly stating that Mattie Cranford recanted on the allegation of rape. Mattie Cranford lived out the remainder of her life in Newnan, Georgia raising her four small children as a single parent. She died on January 24, 1923, without ever having changed her story.