This week in 1934

“I want to warn others of my race. I wish some of them were here to see how we go. It’s awful.”

— Johnny Jones, convicted of rape, hanging, Mississippi.
Executed March 16, 1934

As part of a large spectacle, Jones, twenty-three, and two other young African American men were hung in front of a crowd that mocked and shouted at them while on the platform. Jones was buried in a plain coffin and dumped into a grave that would never be marked.

At least one source spelled Jones’s first name “Johnnie.”