*The history of the United States has been scarred by such dreadful and heinous racial crimes and acts of hatred that we rarely even want to bring them up today. The brutal lynching of Mary Turner is one such event. The event took place over a century ago on the 16th of May, 1918.
In most southern states, events like these became a convenient way to preserve the racial hierarchy.
Mary Turner was a young Black woman who was eight months pregnant when she became a victim of brutal lynching at the hands of a white mob. Her only crime was speaking publicly against the extrajudicial murder of her husband, Hayes Turner.
Before the Lynching
It all started with the killing of a white planter known as Hampton Smith. Hampton was notorious for being brutal with his plantation workers to the extent that nobody would work for him anymore. This was an era when slavery had long been abolished, but the system was very much still in the clutches of racist white men in most southern states. There was legislation being passed into law which led to Black men being imprisoned for offenses as ridiculous as “playing dice.”
This injustice allowed plantation owners to keep ‘convicts’ as labor by paying their fine money. One such unfortunate black male was Sydney Johnson, who was employed by Hampton as convict labor. Johnson was subjected to severe beatings for refusing to work while he was sick. One morning, Johnson had his way and shot the master and his wife and fled. This prompted a manhunt led by white mobs which led to the brutal murders of at least 13 Black people, one of whom was Hayes Turner.
Turner had initially been arrested by the police, but the mob took him away from police custody and lynched him.
The Lynching of Mrs. Mary Turner
Devastated and outraged at the loss of her husband, Mrs. Turner spoke up against the white mob and even threatened to have them arrested. By doing so, she agitated these power-hungry men even more. She tried to escape but was apprehended and brutally lynched near Folsom Bridge. They cut her belly open as she was hung upside down from a tree which caused the baby to fall out of her womb. She was shot at and set on fire and her newborn baby was also inhumanely murdered by the mob.
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