Chatham 250

This month marks the 100th anniversary of an event that is part of what has been called Chatham’s “hidden history” — a part of our history that we would rather not acknowledge. That event was the last recorded lynching in Chatham County. On Sunday morning, September 18, 1921, Eugene Daniel (or Daniels) was taken from jail in Pittsboro and murdered by a mob of Chatham County men for a crime he was alleged to have committed the prior Friday night. It’s tempting to speculate that the telephone may have enabled the mob to assemble so quickly. A similar mob, reported to have come from a wide area, had rapidly assembled a few weeks prior in a thwarted attempt to lynch an accused murderer. That prisoner had been removed to Raleigh for safety. It may be that a general lust for “lynch law” found in Daniel an easy replacement. The crime that sixteen-year-old Daniel stood accused of was entering an occupied dwelling at night. It was surmised that he intended to harm a young white woman who lived there. Subsequently, some have speculated that perhaps, if indeed Daniel was in the house as accused, he was seeking the family’s Black maid. Because justice was subverted by the mob, which brutally murdered Daniels before any evidence was collected or he got to tell his side of the story, we will never know the truth of what happened on the night of the accused crime. We do know that no one was held accountable for the young man’s murder. Some people will remember that the Pittsboro jailer, Taylor, was deaf, and, lacking the power of speech, was unable to turn back the mob with the dramatic oral delivery often seen in movies and novels. We can only hope that he tried. The editorial […]