William Steen, July 30, 1893
Paris, Lafayette County, Mississippi
On the evening of July 30, 1893, a white mob hanged a Black man named William Steen in Paris, Mississippi. The mob targeted Mr. Steen for mob violence because he had disclosed having sex with a white woman. News accounts did not indicate that anyone was ever held accountable for Mr. Steen’s lynching.
Little information is known about Mr. Steen and the circumstances surrounding his lynching, but an article in the Clarion-Ledger of Jackson, Mississippi on August 8, 1893 states that the mob lynched Mr. Steen “for boasting of intimacy with [a] young white lady.” For decades before Emancipation, the strongest and most fervent arguments against abolishing slavery claimed that freeing Black people would leave white women vulnerable to Black men’s alleged sexual aggression and result in rampant ‘race-mixing’ and a collapse of civilization. During the era of racial terror, a majority of white people remained committed to maintaining racial hierarchy, and one of the racial boundaries white people protected most fiercely was the prohibition of sexual, romantic, or any intimate contact between Black men and white women. To enforce this arbitrary rule of racial hierarchy, white communities took the position that a white woman would never willingly agree to intimate relations with a Black man, and therefore, all contact between Black men and white women was evidence of sexual aggression by Black men. This myth put Black men in danger because any white person’s perception that a Black man was seeking intimacy with a white woman could result in deadly mob violence. In Mr. Steen’s case, the mere suggestion that he had an intimate relationship with a white woman was enough motivation for a white mob to lynch him.
Like the lynching of Mr. Steen, deadly violence against Black people often went under-reported, and the stories of some victims may never be known. During this era, heightened value was placed on the lives of white people compared to the lives of Black people, contributing to blatant indifference towards, or even non-identification of, Black people killed through racial violence and terror.
William Steen is one of at least seven documented Black victims of racial terror lynching killed in Lafayette County, and one of at least 654 reported Black victims of lynching documented in the State of Mississippi.
Sources
St. Louis Globe-Democrat, (St. Louis, Missouri), July 31, 1893
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, (St. Louis, Missouri), July 31, 1893
The Hutchinson News, (Hutchinson, Kansas), August 1, 1893
Alton Telegraph, (Alton, Illinois), August 3, 1893
Clarion-Ledger, (Jackson, Mississippi), August 8, 1893
The Southern Herald, (Liberty, Mississippi), August 11, 1893