On August 19, 1886, in in the small town of Jackson, Tennessee, a terrible injustice occurred when Eliza Woods, an African-American woman, was brutally lynched by a mob after being falsely accused of poisoning her white employer, Jessie Woolen.
By Mr. Madu, Talk Africana
Photo, Cover of “Le Petit Journal”, 7 October, 1906. Depicting the race riots in Atlanta, Georgia. “The Lynchings in the United States: The Massacre of Negroes in Atlanta.”
Eliza Woods served as a cook in the home of Jessie Woolen, a white woman in Jackson, Tennessee. When Woolen fell ill and subsequently died, an autopsy revealed that her stomach contained traces of arsenic, a common poison. Suspicion quickly fell on Woods after authorities discovered that she had a box of rat poison at her home. In the racially charged atmosphere of the South, this piece of circumstantial evidence was enough for many to pronounce her guilty, despite no solid proof.
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