On this in 1918 Mary Turner was lynched in Lowndes County, Georgia.
She was lynched in retaliation for having protested, in a neighboring county, the lynching of her husband Hazel Turner, who had been accused with two other men of murdering a white planter. The planter, Hampton Smith, had a history of being abusive to black workers and had in fact been murdered by Sidney Johnson, who also wounded Smith's wife in the assault.. Johnson fled after committing the crime and in the following manhunt thirteen blacks were killed by whites. Turner was one of several men who were lynched. He'd known to have had conflicts with Smith.
Turner protested that her husband was not guilty and threatened to report the participants in the lynching.
In retaliation she was hung upside down, doused with gasoline and burned alive. She was eight months pregnant at the time and she was slit open and her baby killed on the spot. She was one of four people lynched, or actually five if a person includes her infant, following the Smith murder.
She left two small children.
The Governor of Georgia was given a report of the incident including the names of participants and the instigators. None were charged.
A historical marker stands at the spot of the murder today, noting her lynching and that of the others killed in this mass racial assault.
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