Lynching Of Two Negroes One Is Hanged at Wesson, Miss., For Killing a White Boy And the Other Lynched Near Bay Minette, Ala., For Having Assaulted a White Woman – He Already Was Under a 15-Year Sentence

• Walter Clayton (Attempted Lynching)

Negro Assaulter Lynched In Alabama

Mobile, Ala., April 5. – Walter Clayton, a negro, who was serving time at the stockade of the Hand Lumber company for manslaughter, late Saturday afternoon criminally assaulted Mrs. Joseph White, aged twenty years, and was lynched by a mob of seventy-five men outside the limits of Bay Minette last night.

The assault occured at the woman’s home, six miles below Loxley. Clayton entered the house, it is said, choked Mrs. White and accomplished his purpose. The negro returned to the convict camp, where he was arrested late Saturday night. The negro told the officers not to take him back to the scene of his crime, as he committed it and it was not necessary to have him identified. The officers hurried him to Bay Minette, county seat of Baldwin County. As they approached the front gate of the jail seventy-five men arose from behind a fence and took charge of the negro, dragging him and the deputy seventy-five yards before it was discovered the men were handcuffed together. The deputy was then released and the negro carried away. The negro’s body has not yet been found.

Clayton was given a fifteen years’ sentence in the Mobile courts last summer on a charge of manslaughter, it being charged that he robbed and murdered John McKenzie, an old white man, in this city on Christmas eve, 1906. He was a model prisoner at the stockade and was made a trusty.

“Lynching Of Two Negroes; One Is Hanged at Wesson, Miss., For Killing a White Boy; And the Other Lynched Near Bay Minette, Ala.,; For Having Assaulted a White Woman – He Already Was Under a 15-Year Sentence.” The Journal and Tribune (Knoxville, TN), April 6, 1908.