Negroes Strung Up One Lynched For Murder, The Othef For Criminal Assault Mobs Are Well Behaved Alabamians and Mississippians Went About Business in Hand in an Orderly Manner

• Walter Clayton (Attempted Lynching)

MOBILE, ALA., April 5. – Walter Clayton, a negro who was serving at the stockade of the Hand Lumber company for manslaughter, late Saturday afternoon criminally assaulted Mrs. Joseph White, aged 20 years, and was lynched last night by a mob of seventy-five men outside the limits of Bay Minette.

The assault occured at the woman’s home, six miles below Moxley. 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 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 several yards before it was discovered that the men were handcuffed together. The deputy was then released and the negro carried away. Late this afternoon the sheriff was still looking for the body of the negro.

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.

“Negroes Strung Up; One Lynched For Murder, The Othef For Criminal Assault; Mobs Are Well Behaved; Alabamians and Mississippians Went About Business in Hand in an Orderly Manner.” Abilene Semi Weekly Farm Reporter (Abilene, TX), April 7, 1908.