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NEAR THE JAIL were railroad tracks where a switch engine had been backed up. The lynching party put its prisoners aboard and drove it north a little more than a mile to a field near the city brickworks. The route was the same one Ida had taken so many times when teaching in Woodstock; the same line, a dozen miles down, where the C&O conductor had ejected her from the ladies car.
Upon a signal from the executioners, the switch engine let off steam and blew its whistle, to drown out at least some of the gunshots. Calvin McDowell did not go gently; he grabbed one of the men's pistols, even with his hands bound. He may even have managed to kill an assailant. Reports noted that there were four pools of blood on the ground and only three victims. A policeman was said to have "died suddenly" the day after the lynching under obscure circumstances. Whether or not McDowell managed the deed, he was punished for his "insolence" by having the fingers on his offending hand shot and mutilated as well as his eyes gouged out, leaving him so disfigured that the mourners who passed his casket gasped in horror. Tommie, the paper said, had begged for his life, for the sake of his wife and the unborn child she was carrying. His plea was scorned. He was asked only for his final words. "Tell my people to go West—" he said, "there is no justice for them here." The deputies found the bodies shortly before dawn—it could not have been many hours later. When they rolled Moss over, they discovered he was carrying papers in his back pocket. They were his Sunday school literature. |
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