Mary Turner

People

Mary Turner (subject)

Outcome

Lynching

On May 19, 1918, Mary Turner, a Black woman who was eight months pregnant, was lynched by a white mob at Folsom's Bridge in Georgia for publicly denouncing the lynching of her husband, Hayes Turner, the day before. Her murder was part of a larger wave of racial terror that killed at least 11 to 13 African Americans in Brooks and Lowndes counties over a two-week period following the killing of white plantation owner Hampton Smith on May 16, 1918. The violence began when Sidney Johnson, a Black laborer, shot and killed Hampton Smith, who was known for abusing Black workers on his plantation. Smith had a practice of bailing Black people out of jail and forcing them to work off their debt in his fields. Mary Turner had previously been severely beaten by Smith, and when her husband Hayes threatened Smith in response, local authorities sentenced Hayes to time on a chain gang. After Smith's killing, a white mob launched a manhunt, and Hayes Turner was accused without evidence of being complicit in the murder. On May 17, 1918, Hayes was seized by the mob, removed from jail, and lynched. His body was left hanging as a public spectacle. Grief-stricken by her husband's murder, Mary Turner publicly condemned the lynching and threatened to seek legal recourse against the perpetrators an act of extraordinary defiance in 1918 Georgia. In retaliation, the mob seized her on May 19. They bound her feet, hanged her upside down from a tree, threw gasoline on her, and burned the clothes off her body. While she was still alive, a member of the mob cut her unborn baby from her body with a butcher's knife. When the baby fell to the ground and cried, a mob member crushed the infant's head with his foot. The mob then riddled Mary Turner's body with hundreds of bullets. Following the lynchings, more than 500 Black residents fled the area to escape the violence, though white people threatened to kill Black workers who attempted to leave. Although local officials were given the names of instigators and 15 specific participants, no one was ever charged or convicted for any of the murders.

Lynched.