Lawson Patton, September, 8, 1908
Oxford, Lafayette, Mississippi
On September 9, 1908, Lawson Patton (Nib or Nelse Patton), a mob of upwards of 100 men and boys battered the doors of the jail, fatally shot Patton, and hanged him from a telegraph pole on the Lafayette County Courthouse. Patton ran a “blind Tiger” or type of speakeasy with Black clientele & was a bootlegger. He was accused of the murder of a white woman.
Sources
African American Victims of Lynching pp. 127-129 in Finnegan, Terence. A Deed So Accursed : Lynching in Mississippi and South Carolina, 1881-1940, University of Virginia Press, 2013.
[New Orleans] Daily Picayune, Sept. 9, 1908, p. 1
Lafayette County Press, Sept. 9, 1908, cited in Arthur Kinney’s Faulkner and Racism, which states Patton was the inspiration for the character of Joe Christmas in Light in August.
New York Times, Sept. 9, 1908, p. 1