1919-02-06
Onslow 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: Unrecorded
Alleged victim: Grover Dickey
Household Status: Unmarried
Occupation: Farmhand
John Daniels allegedly murdered Grover Dickey, foreman at the Roper Lumber Company in Camp Perry, with a blow to the head; Dickey’s wife was a witness to the crime. After it was confirmed that Dickey was dead, Daniels and a suspected accomplice, Daniel Petteway, were taken into custody by a sheriff’s posse and confined in the Jacksonville jail. A guard was placed by the jail to protect the alleged criminals, but early one morning four cars arrived at the jail and threatened to kill the jailer if he did not hand over the keys. After Daniels threatened to kill the first man who entered his cell, he was shot by four different men and “fell limp to the floor.” He and Petteway were “rushed” from the jail and Daniels’s body was later found hanging from a nearby bridge. Newspapers reported that the mob agreed to free Petteway if he would leave Onslow County.
Documentation
Death certificate: Death Certificate: John Daniels
Census: None found
News coverage:
Kinston Negro May Have Been Strung Up by Onslow Mob
No Lynching in Onslow Probable
Two Negroes Taken from Onslow Jail by Masked Mob
Location
Town: Jacksonville, North Carolina
Latitude/Longitude: 34.756393, -77.42164
Rationale: Current location of bridge crossing New River in Jacksonville.
Additional Resources:
Researcher’s Note: