Jim McIlherron

Jim McIlherron was an African-American man who was tortured and executed by a lynch mob on February 12, 1918, in Estill Springs, Tennessee. McIlherron was lynched in retaliation for shooting and killing two white men after a fight broke out.

Walter White wrote a report on the lynching for the May 1918 issue of the NAACP magazine The Crisis.

It was also covered by the York Daily Record and The New York Times in February 1918.

Personal life Jim McIlherron lived with his parents and several brothers. The father, who owned his own land during a time of "separate, but equal" in America, was despised for being wealthy "for a negro".

The McIlherron family aggravated the local white community, as they had a reputation for not backing down to insults from whites. The family had become a bit more wealthy than their white neighbors. The people in the Estill Springs area were generally the poorer white folk,

The state of Tennessee offered a reward of $500 for the apprehension and conviction of those who tortured and killed McIlherron.

The Sentinel-Record of Hot Springs, Arkansas, covered the lynching but the reporting is not consistent with Walter White's investigation. The Sentinel-Record reported that the third man shot was fatally wounded when White's investigation found, "he latter will recover, as his wounds are not serious." p. 18 The newspaper also reported that McIlherron was lynched at the spot where the shootings occurred. White's investigation found that although that was an initial plan, because a number of women in the town objected, McIlherron was moved, "into a small clump of woods in front of the Campbellite church." p. 19