Stephen Williams was an

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

man, lynched in Upper Marlboro, Maryland on October 20, 1894. Williams had confessed to assaulting Mrs. Katie Hardesty, an offense described as "one of the most brutal in the criminal annals of Prince George's County" and was locked up in the Jail in Upper Marlboro. A group of masked men broke into the jail and pulled Williams from under his mattress, put a rope around his neck and dragged him from the jail. Williams was dragged to the "iron bridge just between the town and the railroad depot." The rope was thrown over the top beams of the bridge and Williams was "hauled up." A round of gunfire was unleashed into Williams' hanging body and the corpse was left dangling on the bridge. This was the same bridge that

Joe Vermillion Joseph Vermilion was a 27-year-old white man lynched December 3, 1889 for the crime of arson in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. Vermillion had been jailed in Upper Marlboro for a series of arsons involving barns filled with tobacco Tobacco is ...

was lynched on in 1889.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Williams, Stephen 1894 deaths 1894 in Maryland 1894 murders in the United States African-American history of Prince George's County, Maryland Williams, Stephen Racially motivated violence against African Americans Prince George's County, Maryland October 1894 events