1892-06-09
Stanly County, NC
Alleged offense: Murder
Race: Black
Gender: Male
Age: Unrecorded
Legal intervention (in alleged offense): Yes
Legal intervention (following lynching): Yes
Mob size: Unrecorded
Mob members: None named
Alleged victim: D. B. Tucker
Household Status: Unrecorded
Occupation:Unrecorded
An African American man, Alexander Whitley, was accused of killing D. B. Tucker in Arkadelphia, Arkansas on February 20, 1892. According to newspaper accounts, Whitley fled Arkansas and returned to Stanly County where he and his alleged victim were from. Whitley was eventually captured and held in the county jail in Albemarle pending instructions from the sheriff in Arkansas. On the night of June 9, a mob formed and came to the jail to take Whitley. Despite the sheriff’s protest to such deeds and attempts to keep the keys from the mob members, the mob broke down the jail doors, cut Whitley from his shackles, and took him out of the jail to be killed. The mob headed west, crossed Long Creek, and hanged Whitley from a limb there in the western outskirts of town. At the site of the lynching, Whitley supposedly pled for his life and declared himself innocent of the crime he was accused of. Whitley’s body was left hanging until the following morning.
Documentation
Death certificate: None found
Census: None found
News coverage:
An Inuriated Mob Takes the Law in Their Own Hands [sic]
![An Inuriated Mob Takes the Law in Their Own Hands [sic]](http://lynching.web.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/9169/2015/03/The_Daily_Journal_Sat__Jun_11__1892_.jpg){kind=link}
Location
Town: Albemarle, North Carolina
Latitude/Longitude: 35.205730, -80.12156
Rationale:
Additional Resources: Albemarle, Stanley Co., N.C., March 1902
Researcher’s Note: Allegedly the “first lynching ever done in [the] county”