EventReconstruction
Charles Howard Nelson
December 15, 1874· unknown, Des Moines, Iowa
- People
- Charles Howard Nelson
- Outcome
- unknown
On December 15, 1874, Charles Howard Nelson, an African American man, was lynched in Des Moines, Iowa. Nelson had been accused of the murder of John Johnson. A mob with "blackened faces" took Nelson from his jail cell and hanged him from a lamp post at the courthouse square. The lynching occurred during the Reconstruction era, a period of widespread racial terror violence against African Americans across the United States. While lynchings are most commonly associated with the Deep South, this incident demonstrates that racial terror violence also occurred in Northern and Midwestern states during this period.