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Elbert Williams of Brownsville, Tennessee, was lynched in 1940 for trying to organize Black residents to register and vote; also that yr, Jesse Thornton of Luverne, Alabama, was lynched for failing to handle a police officer as "Mister". In 1940, three lynchings of Black men by whites (no KKK affiliation is known) came about within the South: Elbert Williams was the primary NAACP member known to be killed for civil rights activities: he was murdered in Brownsville, Tennessee, for working to register Black individuals to vote, and several other other activists were run out of city; Jesse Thornton was lynched in Luverne, Alabama, for a minor social infraction; and 16-yr-previous Austin Callaway, a suspect within the assault of a white lady, was taken from jail in the middle of the evening and killed by six white males in LaGrange, Georgia. Studies find that normally, the KKK membership in these cities was from the stable, successful center lessons, with few members drawn from the elite or the working classes. The KKK was a secret organization; apart from just a few high leaders, most members never identified as such and wore masks in public. |
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