Lynchings No. 2,3 and 4

The 1930 Black List moved up last week from one lynching to three when two Negroes were almost simultaneously done to death by mobs in Mississippi and South Carolina. Furthermore, a white man was killed in Florida.

In Mississippi. Dave Harris, black and 35, was suspected of stealing groceries from the Clayton Funderberg farm near Rosedale. Young Clayton Funderberg, 17, with two friends marched out with shotguns to the Harris cabin to "teach that damn nigger a lesson." Harris met them with a volley of buckshot, dropped Clayton dead in his tracks, fled for the Mississippi swamps. All night 200 men and boys searched for him, found him at dawn, cringing in an empty barn. They lugged him up to the levee, mocked his yammerings for mercy. "De Lord save me--" cried Harris as guns cracked about him, shots riddled his body.

Deputy Sheriff Day arrived "too late" to make arrests. Deputy Sheriff Courtney expected no investigation "until next fall."

In South Carolina. Allen Green, black and 50, was suspected of raping an 18-year-old white woman, was held in the Oconee County jail at Walhalla. At midnight a masked mob of several hundred men and boys broke into the jail. Sheriff John Thomas tried to fight them off, to protect his prisoner. He was bashed over the head, had his skull fractured. The lynchers whisked Green three miles out of town by motor, tied him to a tree, tore his body to shreds with bullets.

Unlike the authorities in Mississippi, South Carolina's Governor John Gardiner Richards moved swiftly, despatched a squad of special detectives to Oconee County to round up the lynchers. Four men were arrested, jailed, while 19 suspects were watched. Sheriff Thomas, removed to an Anderson hospital, was in a serious condition as a result of his injuries.

In Florida John Hodaz, white and 40, suspected of dynamiting the Plant City home of one J. L. Waller with whom he had been on bad terms, was evilly spirited away by a masked mob from the hands of deputy sheriff Tobe Robinson. Later a woodcutter found his bullet-punctured body suspended from a tree.

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