The lynching of Sam Hose

Sam Hose - his name was Samuel Wilkes - killed his employer Alfred Cranford during an argument over wages, and said he had done it in self-defence when Cranford drew a gun. The Atlanta newspapers added a charge of raping Cranford's wife. An investigator hired by Ida B. Wells found no support for it, and offered rewards for the capture of the people who had spread it.

On 23 April 1899, near Newnan, a mob took Hose from his captors. Special trains ran from Atlanta so that people could attend. He was tied to a pine, his ears, fingers and genitals cut off, his face skinned, and then he was doused in oil and burned. The Atlanta Constitution estimated two thousand spectators. Pieces of his body were cut away and sold; his knuckles were displayed in the window of an Atlanta grocery.

W. E. B. Du Bois was a professor at Atlanta University, walking downtown with a careful written statement for the Constitution, when he was told the knuckles were on display a little further along the street. He turned back. He later wrote that "one could not be a calm, cool, and detached scientist while Negroes were lynched, murdered, and starved" - the moment he dated his turn from sociology to agitation.