L.B. Reed
September 10, 1919· unknown, Clarksdale, Mississippi
- People
- L.B. Reed
- Outcome
- unknown
On September 10, 1919, L.B. Reed, an African American World War I veteran, was lynched in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Reed was hanged from the Sunflower River Bridge after being accused of having a relationship with a white woman. His murder occurred during what became known as the "Red Summer" of 1919, a period of intense racial violence across the United States that saw at least 76 people killed in mob attacks and lynchings between January and September of that year. Reed was one of at least eleven African American veterans lynched in 1919. Black soldiers who had served their country in the Great War returned home expecting to be treated as full citizens, only to encounter intensified hostility from white Americans who viewed their military service as a threat to the racial hierarchy. Senator James K. Vardaman of Mississippi had openly warned in 1917 that Black veterans returning to the South would "inevitably lead to disaster." Many Black soldiers were attacked simply for wearing their uniforms in public. The Equal Justice Initiative has documented 13 racial terror lynchings in Coahoma County, Mississippi, between 1880 and 1950, with L.B. Reed among the victims memorialized at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. Mississippi led the nation in lynchings during 1919, with at least nineteen Black victims, representing over a quarter of the national total. Like most lynchings of the era, no one was ever prosecuted for Reed's murder.