The Lynching of Luther and Mary Holbert (warning: graphic description)

The events surrounding the murder of Luther and Mary Holbert illustrate the detestable nature of lynching. Here are the details as related by historian, Chris Myers Asch, in his book, The Senator and the Sharecropper: The Freedom Struggles of James O. Eastland and Fannie Lou Hamer.

The exact nature of the conflict leading to the lynching of the Holberts in February, 1904 is not precisely clear, but it had to do with love. Luther Holbert, a worker on the James Eastland plantation in Sunflower County, Mississippi, had been living with Mary who was the wife or ex-wife of another worker, Albert Carr. Holbert and Carr had a dispute over the romance and eventually Eastland intervened. Carr and Eastland went to the Holbert’s cabin armed with guns. Only the results, not the details, of the encounter are known. At the end of the altercation at the cabin, both Eastland and Carr lay dead at the hands of Luther Holbert.

Jim Crow “justice” was quick and certain for any black man who killed a white man. Fearing for their lives, Luther and Mary Holbert went on the run. Led by Eastland’s brother, Woods Caperton Eastland, the alleged crime ignited the white population and hundreds of white men who pursued the Holberts with bloodhounds guiding them. Despite Mary disguising herself as a man and taking to the swamps, the Holberts were captured three days later. What happened next is a horror of inhumanity.

The lynching didn’t happen immediately. It was planned for the next day, a Sunday afternoon after church so a large crowd could gather. The murderers strategically chose a location for maximum intimidation. It took place on the property of a black church in Doddsville, MS. The black church has historically been the locus of religious and communal life for black people. Performing a lynching on church grounds sent a message to all black people in the area that no place was safe from white supremacy.

More than a thousand people showed up to gawk at the lynching of Luther and Mary Holbert. The lynchers tied up the Holberts and commenced with “the most fiendish tortures.” First, the white murderers cut off each of the fingers and toes of their victims and gave them out as souvenirs. Then they beat them so mercilessly that one of Luther Holbert’s eyes hung only by a shred from its socket. Then came the most fiendish abuse. The Vicksburg Evening Post reported, “The most excruciating form of punishment consisted in the use of a large corkscrew in the hands of some of the mob. This instrument was bored into the flesh of the man and woman, in the arms, legs, and body, and then pulled out, the spirals tearing out big pieces of raw quivering flesh every time it was withdrawn.”

Finally, the Holberts, who were still alive, were taken to a pyre. The white men cruelly forced two black men under threat of death to drag the Holberts to the fires. They burned Mary first so Luther could see his beloved killed. Then they burned him.

The tragic and infuriating lynching of the Holberts is just one of literally thousands of similar examples. Although the details vary, the broad contours remain the same. Lynchings usually took place because of some perceived slight. Anti-lynching crusader, Ida B. Wells, found that lynchings were often over economic disputes. But imagined sexual predation on the part of black men was frequently an excuse.

Almost no white people who participated in the lynching of black citizens ever faced a legal consequence. Woods Eastland, who led the mob, actually faced charges in the murder. But his acquittal was a foregone conclusion. After the all-white jury found him innocent, Eastland hosted a party on his plantation to celebrate.