Lynching of Jim Early

Lynching in Plantersville, Texas

Part of Jim Crow Era
Date	May 17, 1922
Location	Plantersville, Grimes County, Texas
Participants	A white mob
Deaths	Thomas Early aka Jim Early

Jim Early (some sources give the first name of Thomas and family name of "Earlie") was a 25-year-old African-American man who was lynched in Plantersville, Grimes County, Texas, by a mob on May 17, 1922. According to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary it was the 24th of 61 lynchings during 1922 in the United States.

Background

Described as a "half-wit", Early was raised in nearby Montgomery County, Texas, but had moved to West Texas several years earlier. He had apparently returned to the region and on Monday, May 15, 1922, officers arrested Early after reports of a white girl screaming that she was being attacked were heard. He was placed in a jail in Anderson, Texas but being familiar with jail locks escaped on May 16, 1922.

Lynching

An official posse was formed but a mob caught and lynched him on the night of May 17, 1922, or the early morning of May 18, 1922. His body was found hanging from a big oak tree.

Bibliography

Notes

• "Negro 'Earlie' Hanged Near Plantersville". Conroe Courier. Conroe Courier Pub. Co. May 19, 1922. OCLC 14148348.
• "Negro Boy Tortured and Burned at Stake In Georgia After Killing White Woman". New York Times. May 19, 1922. ISSN 1553-8095. OCLC 1645522. Retrieved July 15, 2020.
• "Georgia Negro burned at the stake". The Pensacola Journal. Pensacola, Escambia, Florida: Mayes & Co. May 19, 1922. pp. 1–8. ISSN 1941-109X. OCLC 16280864. Retrieved February 25, 2022.
• United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary (1926). "To Prevent and Punish the Crime of Lynching: Hearings Before the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee on S. 121, Sixty-Ninth Congress, First Session, on Feb. 16, 1926". United States Government Publishing Office. Retrieved January 23, 2022.