Lynching of L. Q. Ivy
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| Lynching of L. Q. Ivy | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Location | Rocky Ford, Mississippi (now Etta, Mississippi) |
| Date | September 20, 1925 |
Attack type | Assault, kidnapping, torture, murder |
| Weapons | Blow torch, chains, guns, rope, Model T axle, lemon squeezers |
| Deaths | 1 civilian |
| Victim | L. Q. Ivy |
| Perpetrators | Lynching conspirators, lynching enablers |
| Assailants | Lynch mob |
No. of participants |
|
| Motive | |
| Convictions | None |
L. Q. Ivy was a seventeen-year-old African-American male who was accused of raping a White woman in 1925 in Rocky Ford, Mississippi.[1][2] He was tortured and burned to death in 1925 by a lynch mob of White people.[3]
In September 1925, Bessie Gaines, a 21-year-old White single mother, was raped and severely beaten in Rocky Ford (now known as Etta, Mississippi). A neighbor drove her to the nearest hospital in New Albany, where Union County sheriff John Roberts interviewed her and her family. The sheriff assembled a posse of White men, who used bloodhounds to search for her attacker. The dogs led them to a group of Black timber-cutters, including Cleveland Jones, Sherill Kilpatrick, Spencer Ivy, and L. Q. Ivy.[2]
According to University of Mississippi Professor and journalist LaReeca Rucker, people interviewed "...said Rush Scott, one of the members of the posse that the sheriff deputized to search for Gaines' assailant, told police that from the time the black suspects were dropped off at the logging field, and the time Gaines said the rape occurred, it would have been impossible for anyone to travel on foot the two and a half miles to the cornfield where she was attacked. He also reportedly remarked that he saw the white driver of a gas truck from New Albany, moving across the cornfield."[2]
Arrest, mob gathering
For unknown reasons, the sheriff settled on L. Q. Ivy as the likely culprit, and he was arrested and transported to the hospital in New Albany, and presented to Gaines. She was unable to definitively identify Ivy as her attacker. A contemporary newspaper article states that Ivy confessed around this time, but that account has been contradicted by modern academics.[1][4] Sheriff Roberts did not hold Ivy in the New Albany jail, but secretly moved him to Aberdeen,[3][5] because authorities "predicted a riot might occur."[2]
Mob violence was the preferred form of retribution; to white men of pride and honor some crimes were simply too hateful to be left to the ordered redress of the state. Lynching, as United States Senator Bilbo said, was often the only "immediate and proper and suitable punishment." When effected in defense of a white woman's virtue it was not merely the public will summarily executed, it was the highest form of justice known in this world or the next. "... Mississippi's classic Southern gentleman John Sharp Williams ...said that "race is greater than law... and protections of women transcends all law, human and divine." It was a law unto itself.
— Neil R. McMillen[6]
Mayor J.E. Tate, Judge Thomas Pegram, and the sheriff urged calm, and sheriff's deputies confiscated a large number of weapons. New Albany native and U.S. Senator Hubert Stephens attempted to get the mob to disperse. The crowd dispersed after it was revealed that the Sheriff had secreted Ivy "down the river".[5]
Failed identification
That night, a group of men led by Billy Preston entered the home of Judge Pegram, and coerced him into writing a writ to produce Ivy at the hospital on Monday. Sheriff Roberts attempted to defeat the mob by bringing Ivy to the hospital on Sunday morning instead, where he was presented to Bessie Gaines for identification. Gaines could not definitively identify Ivy as the perpetrator, but stated "I'm not sure but he looks like the man." Upon leaving, Preston and the mob accosted the sheriff outside the hospital. The victim's father, Bob Gaines, distracted the crowd by shouting that Bessie was not sure, and asked the crowd not to take hasty action. Roberts, along with the sheriff from Aberdeen, took advantage of the distraction to attempt to hustle Ivy away from the scene.[7]
Vigilante torture
Instead, Union County Sheriff John Roberts took custody of Ivy and attempted to drive him to Holly Springs, leaving behind two deputies to block the mob from following. Under armed threats from the mob, the deputies allowed them to pass, then the sheriff faced a roadblock from the vigilantes. At this point, the sheriff relinquished Ivy into the hands of the mob, just outside the city limits of Myrtle. The mob took him to a location in Rocky Ford, where they tortured him with knives and with fire, dangling him from a rafter. While Ivy continued to maintain his innocence through torture, a larger mob, estimated at 400 gathered.
This mob built a pyre. The mob stripped Ivy, drove a Model T axle into the ground and chained him to it. He was tortured with a blowtorch and lemon squeezers, which were used to squash his testicles into a bloody pulp. They piled crates soaked with kerosene around him. When it was apparent that he would be burned, some sources state that Ivy confessed.[8] According to one source, "Ivy confessed that he was the lone assailant, probably because he wanted to spare the three other African American men who were being held in connection with the attack."[5] After considerable torture, three men stepped forward and set fire to the crates.[3] Ivy died and the stench became objectionable, and more wood was added to the fire to completely consume the body.[5]