Church Burned, and Jonah Wood Strung Up to a Tree

Columbus Daily Enquirer (Georgia)
Thursday, 16 June 1904 -- pg. 1 [via GenealogyBank]

NEGROES LYNCH A NEGRO DEACON

HEARD COUNTY NEGRO LYNCHED BECAUSE HE HAD THREATENED TO REPORT CRAP SHOOTERS TO THE GRAND JURY.

La Grange, Ga., June 15. – News has just reached here that a negro by the name of Jonah Woods, who lived in the country near Texas Court grounds in Heard county, 25 miles from La Grange, was lynched by other negroes.  Woods was a deacon in his church and a pious old negro.  It is said he discovered a number of negroes playing "craps" and threatened to report them to the grand jury.  Afterwards the church was burned down and two days later while plowing in the fields he was seized and strung up to a tree.

According to the 1900 Texas, Heard County, Georgia Federal census, Jonah Wood was born in Georgia about 1851.  He married Milley about 1870, and they had at least two children.  Jonah, a farmer, was next door to John R. Wood, who I believe was Jonah's and Milley's son.  John, born about 1872 in Georgia, was also a farmer.  About 1890, he married Ellen.  The couple had at least three children:  Idila, Jonah, and William.

A simple search on Google will give you the statistics. The Tuskegee Institute kept track of lynchings in America from 1882 - 1968. There were 581 in Mississippi, 531 in Georgia, 493 in Texas, 391 in Louisiana, 347 in Alabama, and so on. Total from all states: 4,743. That's more than one lynching and victim a week.

I feel a little like I should try to explain why I would give the horrible acts – those committed by the criminal, as well as those committed on the criminal – voice on this blog. There are no (at least to my knowledge) statistics showing the accuracy of the lynchers. How many times was an innocent person hung, riddled with bullets, and mutilated in the name of "justice?" I mean, we probably agree there are innocent people sitting in jail right now – with supposed checks and balances in place. Imagine when there were none. Shouldn't those innocent people be remembered?

Now, make no mistake, sometimes the lynching party "punished" the right person. As in, sometimes the true perpetrator was indeed apprehended – and then disposed of, often in a barbaric fashion. Even if you take the literal "eye for an eye" death penalty approach, I would not be surprised if that would have been an applicable punishment in only an infinitesimal number of cases. People were lynched for stealing, people were lynched for "insubordination," people were lynched for literally being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And let us not be cowards and leave out the racism debacle that lingers to this day. So another reason for giving voice to these past atrocities is in the same vein of "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

As a family historian, I am saddened to think (1) these revolting deeds took place, and (2) while statistics are easy to find, the names and stories of the individual victims are much harder to locate. A list of lynching victims will unfortunately never be complete. I hope that in a small way, posts such as these will serve as a memorial to those who were victims of Judge Lynch and his frightful law.