Benjamin Thomas (1883/1884 – 1899) was a 16-year-old Black teenager who was

lynched Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group. It is most often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged transgressor, punish a convicted transgressor, or intimidate people. It can also be an ex ...

Alexandria, Virginia Alexandria is an independent city (United States), independent city in the northern region of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Virginia, United States. It lies on the western bank of the Potomac River approximately south of Downto ...

on August 8, 1899. He had been arrested the day before and put into jail before a mob broke into the jail, dragging him outside, before beating him and ultimately he was hanged to death. He was the second of two reported lynching victims in Alexandria; the first, almost two years earlier, was Joseph H. McCoy.

Lynching

Benjamin Thomas was arrested on August 7, 1899 accused of assaulting the 8-year-old daughter of a white neighbor. Thomas claimed his innocence. The evening of the next day, August 8, beginning around 10 PM a mob of hundreds of white residents surrounded the jail where was being held and demanded he be released to them. Around midnight they were able to break into the jail and forceably remove Thomas. He was then beaten, had a noose placed around his neck, and dragged approximately half a mile around the city. He was then lynched, hanged to death, at the corner of King and Fairfax streets.

Legacy

Beginning in 2020, the city of Alexandria has begun honoring Benjamin Thomas on the anniversary of his lynching. In 2022, the city held a ceremony involving soil collected from locations connected to Thomas's life to transport to the

Equal Justice Initiative The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) is a non-profit organization, based in Montgomery, Alabama, that provides legal representation to prisoners who may have been wrongly convicted of crimes, poor prisoners without effective representation, and othe ...

in Montgomery, Alabama.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thomas, Benjamin 1899 deaths 1899 in Virginia Lynching deaths in Virginia History of Alexandria, Virginia