Claude Neal

Claude Neal (b. 1911 – d. October 26, 1934) was a 23-year-old African-American farmhand who was arrested in Jackson County, Florida, on October 19, 1934, for allegedly raping and killing Lola Cannady, a 19-year-old white woman missing since the preceding night. Circumstantial evidence was collected against him, but nothing directly linked him to the crime. When the news got out about his arrest, white lynch mobs began to form. In order to keep Neal safe, County Sheriff Flake Chambliss moved him between multiple jails, including the county jail at Brewton, Alabama, away. But a lynch mob of about 100 white men from Jackson County heard where he was, and brought him back to Jackson County.

The time and place of the lynching were provided to the news media in advance and reported on nationwide, attracting a huge crowd. The spectacle lynching had been announced to take place at the Cannady farm, but the crowd had grown unruly, and a smaller group murdered Neal in secret. He was tortured and mutilated before being hanged by the instigators at a site along the Chattahoochee River, near Greenwood, Florida. They tied his body to the back of their truck and dragged his corpse to the Cannady farm, where a white crowd estimated at 2,000 attacked the corpse by stabbing it with sticks and knives.

A large group of white people went to the courthouse in Marianna, demanding that the body be hanged again so they could see it. When the sheriff refused, they began rioting, assaulting the courthouse, attacking black people in the area, injuring 200, and looting and burning houses. The body was displayed on the courthouse steps so that anyone interested could see it. Due to lynch mobs trying to find and capture Neal, the sheriff moved him multiple times to different jails: The men holding Neal took him to a spot in the woods near Peri Landing along the Chattahoochee River for the murder. he was stabbed, burned with hot irons, and he was raised and lowered in hanging before he finally died. The men then tied his corpse to an automobile and drove to the Cannady property about 1 A.M. After the body was delivered, George Cannady, upset at being deprived of vengeance, shot Neal three times in the forehead. The crowd kicked the body, stabbed it, and ran over it with cars. Some people cut off toes or fingers for souvenirs. Children were encouraged to stab the body with sharpened sticks. The crowd turned outward, burning shacks in the area known to be owned by black people.

Marianna riots The body of Claude Neal was hanged from a tree outside of the county courthouse at 3 o'clock A.M. Photographers took souvenir photos of the body. When Sheriff Chambliss discovered Neal's body at 6 A.M., he cut it down and buried the man. A mob formed outside the courthouse, with over two thousand people having arrived by noon, but they were too late to see Neal's body. Some purchased picture postcards of the corpse from photographers for fifty cents each. The mob demanded that the sheriff hang Neal's body again outside the courthouse, but he refused.

In response to the sheriff's decision, the crowd started to riot. They attacked black people that day, October 27, 1934, injuring about 200 innocent black people making their way on the street. The mob also attacked and injured two white police officers, who were among those trying to suppress the disorder. Some white people took great risks by protecting black people during the riots, often aiding people with whom they worked. The mob headed into black areas of town, looting and burning houses. Florida Governor David Sholtz called in 129 troops of the Florida National Guard, which managed to suppress the riots.

Effects

The brutal lynching of Claude Neal generated outrage throughout the country. According to historian James R. McGovern, this reaction contributed to mass lynchings losing some of their previous social acceptance. There is not a consensus on this conclusion. At the same time, Jessie Daniel Ames was organizing Southern white women to oppose lynchings, and had obtained 40,000 signatures toward this goal. Neal's lynching was covered by the national press and provoked strong opposition across the nation.

This lynching demonstrated the ineffectiveness of state and federal policies against the practice, which were especially limited in the South. While some Americans sought to establish lynching as a federal crime, the Solid South block in Congress, which derived its power from having disenfranchised most black people across the South since the turn of the century, consistently defeated any federal anti-lynching legislation.