Henry Smith (lynching victim)

On February 1, 1893 at the Paris Fairgrounds in Paris, Texas, Henry Smith, a former slave, became the victim of a public, heavily attended and promoted lynching of a Southern black man by a large group of whites.

He was accused of the brutal murder of 3 year-old Myrtle Vance, the daughter of a policeman known for mistreating prisoners. Henry Smith was among those who had previously been beaten by Myrtle's father, after he had been arrested for drunkenness. He was a neighborhood handyman and known alcoholic. When the police found no clues to the child's death, people in the area decided Henry Smith must have committed the crime. After Myrtle's body was found, Smith continued life as usual. Only after hearing a mob was after him, did he flee to Hope, Arkansas.

There he was captured and brought back to Paris by train, where a mob of an estimated 10,000 whites placed him on a carnival float and carried him through town and out into a prairie. There, he was placed upon a scaffold and tortured for fifty minutes by members of the girl's family, who thrust hot iron brands into his flesh starting with his feet and legs and working upward to his head. The family members involved included Myrtle's father, uncles and 12 year-old brother. They tortured him in this way for approximately an hour. An article in New York Sun, 2 February 1893, stated that, "Every groan from the fiend, every contortion of his body was cheered by the thickly packed crowd." Eventually, the hot irons were thrust into his eye sockets and down his throat. Afterwards, finding he was still breathing, the crowd poured oil on him and set him on fire.

Once his body was burned, the crowd fought over the hot ashes to collect his bones and teeth as souvenirs.

On February 7th, Henry Smith's stepson, William Butler was lynched outside of Paris. Butler was known as an upstanding citizen, and was hanged only on suspicion that he had known, and not divulged, the whereabouts of Henry Smith after he had fled.

External links

* [http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5487/ Burned at the Stake: A Black Man Pays for a Town’s Outrage]
* [http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/LL/jgl1.html Handbook of Texas Online]
* [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9F01E5DE103BEF33A25751C0A9649C94629ED7CF New York Times article, "ANOTHER NEGRO BURNED; HENRY SMITH DIES AT THE STAKE. DRAWN THROUGH THE STREETS ON A CAR -- TORTURED FOR NEARLY AN HOUR WITH HOT IRONS AND THEN BURNED -- AWFUL VENGEANCE OF A PARIS (TEXAS) MOB."]
* [http://books.google.com/books?id=ilJKjn9NNW0C&pg=PA63&lpg=PA63&dq=%22henry+smith%22+%22myrtle+vance%22&source=web&ots=SSCTdndPSU&sig=zq0tTebv8tUaSrtL5wVmJu0KRW8 Ida B. Wells: Mother of the Civil Rights Movement]