Lige Daniels
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Murdered in: Center | Aug 3, 1920
On August 3, 1920, the body of Lige Daniels, an African-American teenager, hung in the main square of Center, a small town near the border between Texas and Louisiana. The image of Lige on the cover of a lynching pictorial book, Without Sanctuary, has received world-wide notoriety since first published by two white Atlantans, James Allen and John Littlefield. These lynching photographs were often made into postcards and sold as souvenirs to the crowds in attendance.
Imprisoned on allegations that he murdered a white woman, he was taken from jail by a mob of nearly a thousand citizens, who carried him to the square where they hanged him.
Like most lynching victims, Lige was never properly tried and convicted of the crime for which he was accused, then executed.
Learn about the memorial to Lige Daniels here.
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[…] Center, Texas is a majority-Republican town, and its racist roots trace back to the 1920s when Lige Daniels, a Black teenager, was lynched in the main square at the courthouse. When Jackson returned to Center […]