Lot # : 151 - Identified Hanging African American 1923 Waco TX

100 percent period original! So SUPER SUPER RARE! A photographic record of a powerful historical event! Roy Mitchell was an African-American from Waco, Texas, who was convicted of six murders, and executed on July 30, 1923. His arrest, trial, conviction and execution are considered an example of continued bigotry in the Texas judicial system of the 1920s, but also of reforms aimed at curbing mob violence and public lynching. Mitchell was the last Texan to be executed in public, and is often described as the last to be legally hanged before the introduction of the electric chair.On March 6, 1923, Roy Mitchell was arrested on a charge of gambling. A search of his house produced articles belonging to several people who had been murdered during the past year. To protect Mitchell from possible mob violence, Sheriff Leslie Stegall placed him in the jail at Hillsboro. The prisoner refused to talk, eat, or sleep for three days and nights, before he broke down and confessed to murdering five people. Mitchell was tried and sentenced to death and on June 30, District Clerk R. V. McClain delivered the death warrant to the sheriff of McLennan County who was ordered "to hang Roy Mitchell by the neck until dead, between the hours of 11:00 a.m. and sundown on Monday, July 30, 1923." A scaffold was built in the jail yard, and the county purchased a new suit of clothes for Mitchell to wear but he refused them. On the day of the execution, thousands of people assembled to witness the hanging. Mitchell's trap was sprung at 11:02 a.m., and he was pronounced dead at 11:26 a.m. Mitchell's execution was the last legal hanging in Texas.