The July 5, 1899, edition of the Geneva Daily Times carried the alarming report of a fight involving three white men and “Thomas Jefferson, a negro,” that led to a near riot. Officer Hawkins saw Jefferson throw a stone at the angry crowd pursuing him, came up behind him, “pinioned his arms,” subdued him, and arrested him. Jefferson was tried in police court and fined $3 for disorderly conduct. The police department assured the public that the three white men involved in the fight would be arrested later in the day.
Jefferson arrived in Geneva a year earlier. He stabbed Fred Breuer, was arrested, found guilty of assault, and fined $40, which was paid for by the Barber Asphalt Co. Jefferson worked there as a paver. When Jefferson fled the uneven fight on Exchange Street near the Franklin House, he threw stones because voices shouted, “Lynch him!”
Jefferson picked up a large stone in front of the Carrollton Hotel at 67 Seneca St. and hurled it at his pursuers, barely missing the hotel’s large, glass windows before Officer Hawkins subdued him.
The incident demonstrates that the terrorism of lynching migrated north of the Mason-Dixon line and inflamed the debased imaginations of virulent racists.
Lynchings in the southern states grew steadily, from 74 in 1885 to 161 in 1892, a rate of more or less one every other day. More than 4,000 African Americans were lynched between 1877 and 1950.
And, African Americans........