The lynching of Laura and L. D. Nelson
25 May 1911Bridge over the North Canadian River near Okemah, Okfuskee County, OK
A mob took Laura Nelson and her teenage son from the Okfuskee County jail and hanged them from a bridge over the North Canadian River. A photograph of their bodies was sold as a postcard.
Note: Describes rape and the lynching of a mother and her child, and the trade in photographs of the dead.
Laura Nelson and her son L. D. were held in the Okfuskee County jail in Okemah, Oklahoma, after a deputy was shot during a search of their home for stolen meat. On the night of 24-25 May 1911 a mob took them both from the jail without resistance.
They were hanged from a bridge over the North Canadian River a few miles outside town. Accounts of the night, including those gathered by investigators afterwards, record that Laura Nelson was raped by members of the mob before she was killed. A photographer recorded the bodies on the bridge the next morning, and the image circulated as a souvenir postcard - one of the most widely reproduced lynching photographs in the country.
A grand jury was convened. No one was indicted. The lynching of a mother alongside her child, in a state only four years old, marks how completely the law had been handed over to the mob.
Sources
- Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror (3rd edition)Equal Justice Initiative (2017)eji.org
- Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in AmericaTwin Palms Publishers (2000)Documents the Okemah postcard and the commercial trade in lynching photographs.