Dec. 20, 1918

‘Five days before Christmas, a white mob carried out a quadruple homicide at Mississippi’s “Hanging Bridge” — an incident so horrific it helped inspire a national conference on lynchings.

Authorities had charged sisters Maggie and Alma Howze and brothers Major and Andrew Clark with murder, allegedly over a pay dispute with the women’s boss, but before a trial could take place, a dozen vehicles surrounded the jail, manned by a single deputy. 

The mob abducted the four and took them to a bridge over the Chickasawhay River, one mile north of Shubuta. The next morning, citizens awoke to see four bodies swaying from what locals called the “Hanging Bridge.”

Walter White, who had survived the 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre that killed dozens and wounded scores of others, was working for the national NAACP when he heard what happened in Mississippi. He came to investigate. His light skin enabled him to pass for white.

He uncovered allegations that this boss had sexually abused the sisters, who were both pregnant at the time of their deaths. Major Clark planned to marry Maggie Howze, and he reportedly told the boss to stay away from her. White also discovered that Clark’s purported confession in the case came after authorities put his testicles in a vise. He later published what he learned in the NAACP’s report, “Thirty Years of Lynching.”

Twenty-four years later, dawn brought the sight of two more swaying bodies. Two young Black teens, Ernest Green and Charlie Lang, as young as 14, were lynched at the same site after they were accused of attempting to attack a 13-year-old white girl. Some reports say they were whistling at her or chasing her. The white mob didn’t investigate. They abducted the teens and hanged them from the bridge.

Black newspapers published photographs of the teens’ corpses, and the Justice Department launched what is believed to be the first federal lynching investigation in Mississippi. The killers walked free, but the injustice helped fuel the “Double V” campaign led by Black newspapers. Black soldiers would help win World War II and return home for a second push for victory, this one over Jim Crow and mob violence aimed at African Americans.