Feb 1, 1893 - the worst lynching case in the history of the US
Jesus christ, I hadn't even heard of this until randomly finding it in wikipedia.
Henry Smith (1876 – February 1, 1893) was an African-American youth who was lynched in Paris, Texas. Smith allegedly confessed to murdering the three-year-old daughter of a law enforcement officer who had allegedly beaten him during an arrest. Smith fled, but was recaptured after a nationwide manhunt. He was then returned to Paris, where he was turned over to a mob and burned at the stake.[1] His lynching was covered by The New York Times and attracted national publicity.
A large crowd of from 5,000 to 15,000 people packed into an area of as little as 400 square yards (330 m2),[citation needed] took Smith from his captors and placed him on a mule cart. They paraded him through town[1] and to an open stretch of prairie between the cemetery and railroad tracks. There, organizers had built a 10-foot scaffold painted with the word "Justice".
Smith was tied up and tortured for 50 minutes[1] by Henry Vance, his 15-year-old son, and his brother-in-law. The men placed hot irons under Smith's feet, burned his trunk[8] and limbs, burned both eyes out with hot irons and then shoved a hot iron down his throat.[9] A February 2, 1893, article in the New York Sun reported: "Every groan from the fiend, every contortion of his body was cheered by the thickly packed crowd." The February 2 edition of the Boston Daily Globe deemed Smith's grotesque execution "White Savagery" and claimed "Civilization Seemingly a Failure in Texas."[10]
Finally, the crowd poured coal oil (kerosene) over Smith and set the scaffold on fire.[11] According to some newspaper accounts, Smith remained alive during the burning. When the flames rose high enough, they burned the rope that bound Smith to the stake away and he fell off the scaffolding.[12] At the base of the burning platform, Smith attempted to twist away from the flames, but onlookers kicked him back into the conflagration.[9] After the fire reduced Smith's body to brittle cinder, members of the surrounding crowd moved in and sifted through the ashes to collect Smith's bones and shards of wood as souvenirs.[13] On February 6, 1893, the governor of Texas, Jim Hogg, referred to the lynching of Henry Smith as a "terrible holocaust" and railed against mob violence in the state.[14]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Smith_(lynching_victim)
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