Frank Embree

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Frank Embree (* 1880 - July 22, 1899 in Burton near Fayette, Missouri ) was an African American who was lynched by white citizens because of an alleged violent crime and his skin color . The case led to a falling out between the governors of the neighboring states of Kansas and Missouri .

Arrest and death

Frank Embree was arrested in Garnett, Kansas, in early 1899. He was accused of raping a white underage girl in the neighboring state of Missouri, near the town of Benton. This charge was not uncommon against unpleasant blacks and usually resulted in a death sentence and execution without much evidence in court.

Frank Embree denied having committed the crime. His trial awaited him in the state of the alleged crime, that is, in Missouri. Guarded by several Missouri police officers, he was picked up in Kansas and put on the train, but did not reach his destination. In the middle of the Higbee line, the mob stopped the locomotive. The guards released the prisoners without resistance.

Frank Embree was taken to nearby Burton, undressed, and whipped for half an hour. About 1000 people watched the spectacle. Embree painfully admitted that if only he would be freed from torture and killed, he would admit everything. A professional photographer portrayed the naked man with his deep wounds from the front and back and later when he was hung from a tree. Frank Embree died at the age of nineteen. Photographs of this kind were popular among the white settlers.

Judging by the press of that time, the transport of a black prisoner to the racist state of Missouri meant certain death. The New York Times on July 23, 1899 read:

"Since his arrest several weeks ago, it has been speculated that he would never reach the place of justice."

On August 3rd the newspaper said:

"The accusation against the guy was the one that so often results in sudden and painful death without trial for members of his race."

The case was published in numerous newspapers in the United States and painted more or less richly. The Grand Forks Daily Herald of South Dakota brought the alleged rape victim into play. The article was headed:

“Colored rapist hanged. The victim of his crime saved him from the stake.
Shortly before Burton, the negro was brought into a field where the leaders of the mob questioned him. He gave contradicting statements, was stripped of his clothes, tied to a tree and whipped until the blood ran down his neck. When he was again flogged, he confessed but said he was drunk. The victim of the attack was brought in; she [the girl] identified him. In the meantime, hordes had gathered firewood to burn their victim [Frank Embree]. However, this cruelty was warded off because the daughter insisted not to burn the negro. They hung a rope on an oak tree. There he prayed to God and asked for forgiveness, took cheap junk out of his pockets and asked to be delivered to his old father and mother. Then you pulled him up in the air and after violent convulsions and convulsions he breathed his life out. "

Politics and culture

The political dimension of the case was already evident in the run-up to the crime. When the governor of Kansas, William E. Stanley , learned of the prisoner's transfer, he initially stopped them. He asked the governor of Missouri, Lon Vest Stephens , to guarantee that nothing would happen to the prisoner in transit. When Stephens agreed, Missouri police picked Frank Embree in Kansas. Stephens accepted the lynching while Stanley broke off relations with him.

The photographs of the torture and execution were exhibited a hundred years later, in 1999, in a collection with several other cases of lynching of mostly black prisoners in the Roth Horowitz Gallery in New York. The exhibition was called "Witness" and caused a sensation. The three pictures by Frank Embree, arranged as a triptych , were at the end of the gallery.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In some newspaper articles published at the time, the girl is called "14-year-old Miss Dougherty".
  2. ↑ Quotations translated from English
  3. ^ New Mexican , July 22; Grand Forks Daily Herald , July 23; Idaho Statesman , July 23; Macon Telegraph , July 23; State , July 23; Sun , July 24; Aberdeen Daily News , July 25th. Most of the time the news was printed on the front page.
  4. ^ Roberta Smith : An Ugly Legacy Lives On, Its Glare Unsoftened by Age , New York Times, January 13, 2000

Web links

Commons : Frank Embree  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Embree, Frank
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American victim of lynching
DATE OF BIRTH 1880
DATE OF DEATH July 22, 1899
Place of death Burton, Missouri