1892-11-14
Granville County, NC
Alleged offense: Attempted Rape
Race: Black
Gender: Male
Age: Unrecorded
Legal intervention (in alleged offense): Yes
Legal intervention (following lynching): No
Mob size: Unrecorded
Mob members: None named
Alleged victim: Reuben Overton’s daughter
Household Status: Unmarried
Occupation: Unrecorded
Carter Burnett, an African American man, was accused of attempting to rape the white daughter of Reuben Overton in Oxford, Granville County North Carolina. Burnett was caught the next day and reportedly confessed to being in the room of the girl, though not to assaulting her. He was put in the jail at Oxford where he remained for several weeks. Around a month after the alleged assault, on the night of November 14, 1892, Carter Burnett was abducted from his jail cell and hanged from a tree nearby. In the wake of Burnett’s lynching, resolutions purporting to represent the people of Oxford formally condemned the lynching. Thomas Michael Holt, the Democratic governor of North Carolina, offered a $100 reward for information on the members of the lynch mob. Despite speculation that the men were rural residents from the county, no one appears to have been accused of or arrested for the crime.
Documentation
Death certificate: None found
Census: None found
News coverage:
Location
Town: Oxford, North Carolina
Latitude/Longitude: 36.313088, -78.585015
Rationale:
Additional Resources:
Researcher’s Note: