William Froggie James

William "Froggie" James, an African-American man, was lynched and mutilated on November 11, 1909, by a mob in Cairo, Illinois after he was charged with the rape and murder of 23-year-old shop clerk Anna Pelley.

James was denied due process and killed before the police investigation had been completed. The townspeople of Cairo formed a mob and murdered him. A white prisoner, Henry Salzner, was also murdered by the mob. He was charged with the murder of his wife. The lynching of James drew crowds of thousands, and led the Illinois State Legislature to pass a series of anti-lynch and anti-mob laws that led to major reforms throughout the Midwest involving the sentencing and protections for African American people in Illinois. His lynching also mobilized advocacy groups in the state to push for more legal protections of African-American communities in smaller towns.

Background Anti-lynching legislation Years before James's lynching, the Illinois State Legislature implemented a series of anti-lynching laws to curb the racial tensions that had been brewing throughout the state. In 1901 alone, there were 135 lynchings in Illinois. Anti-lynching bureaus formed to assemble political capital to pass anti-lynching laws. While anti-lynching proponents met considerable resistance, civil rights leaders in Chicago, such as Ida B. Wells, gained significant ground in drafting anti-lynching laws. These leaders were able to gain the support of Illinois governor Charles Deneen, who was imperative in drafting the 1905 anti-lynch laws passed in Illinois. "James had no alibi for the hour between five and six o'clock on November 8, the time which the coroner's jury thought the murder to have taken place. The flour sack that Green had allegedly been washing upon her arrest matched the gag found in Pelley's mouth. Cooper's alleged statement that she washed James's bloodstained clothes on the night of the murder and James's muscular build added to the limited evidence." — "'An Outrageous Proceeding': A Northern Lynching and the Enforcement of Anti-Lynching Legislation in Illinois, 1905–1910" Hearing plans of the assembling mobs, the police began to increase security by the jailhouse, and even dismissed several groups of would-be citizen investigators from the crime scene. While the security was effective in keeping the jailhouse secure, the history of social disorder suggested that the mob was only gaining strength and would eventually overpower the guards. To avoid the even further inflamed racial tensions in nearby towns, the three stayed in Karnak, Illinois, about 27 miles north of Cairo. Hearing of the officers and James fleeing, 300 men from Cairo boarded a freight train to Karnak. The trio were quickly found and offered little resistance to the mob. The officers were disarmed and the mob kidnapped James. McDermott describes his final moments: The enraged and exhilarated mob tied the noose around James's neck, intending to hang him from a steel arch in the well-lit street. Then the mob hoisted up the rope to hang him, demanding that he confess his crime. James allegedly shouted his confession and implicated Arthur Alexander as his accomplice. The judges, jury, and executioners lifted the rope to avenge the dead woman, but the rope broke and threw James roughly to the ground. As he stood, several people in the crowd riddled his body with approximately five hundred bullets. William James was dead. [...] The mob ran with his bleeding body to the murder scene in the alley. One man chopped off James's head, put it on a pike, and lifted it up for the cheering crowd to see. The mob then set James's body on fire and roasted the remains while men, women, and children shouted and cheered. When the fire died out, the horror continued as people moved in to dismember the body. Some took out their pocketknives and cut off ears and fingers and broke up bones to take as gruesome souvenirs. — "'An Outrageous Proceeding': A Northern Lynching and the Enforcement of Anti-Lynching Legislation in Illinois, 1905–1910"

In popular culture The television series American Gods, set partly in Cairo, depicts the lynching of James in its episode "The Ways of the Dead" in its second season.