John Evans

People

John Evans

Outcome

unknown

On November 12, 1914, John Evans, a Black laborer from Dunnellon, Florida, was lynched by a mob of approximately 1,500 white men, women, and children in St. Petersburg, Florida. Evans had been accused, without trial or conviction, of murdering Edward Sherman, a white real estate developer, and attacking Sherman's wife, Mary Sherman. The lynching was orchestrated by a "secret council of fifteen of St. Petersburg's most influential citizens," and carried out with the complicity of local officials, including Police Chief A.J. Easters. Evans was hanged from a light post at the border between the city's segregated Black and white communities. As he struggled to keep himself alive by wrapping his legs around the pole, an unidentified white woman shot him from her car, and the crowd then fired upon his body for more than ten minutes until their ammunition was depleted. A coroner's jury ruled he died at the hands of "unknown" persons, and no one was ever held accountable. For decades, the lynching of John Evans was suppressed from St. Petersburg's public memory. In 1982, journalist and historian Jon Wilson researched the city's history and found that many residents were reluctant to discuss the incident. Though he spoke to many residents who had been alive in 1914, "nobody admitted to knowing anyone involved in the lynch mob." Wilson later wrote: "The lynching of Evans set the tone in St. Pete for racism up until perhaps right now." In 2023, Wilson and playwright Jane A. McNeil published Days of Fear: A Lynching in St. Petersburg, a comprehensive account of the events. The book suggests that someone close to Sherman may have actually committed the murder, and that Evans was lynched by an organized mob for a crime there was no proof he committed.