check out history - Danielsville, GA. | WikiXM

On April 11, 1936, a 45-year-old Black father of eleven children, called Lent Shaw in newspaper accounts as his name is misspelled in court documents was arrested by Madison County police and being taken to the county jail in Danielsville. His accuser, a white woman aged 22, alleged that Shaw was the man who attacked her on April 10.

Shaw claimed that he was at home at the time of the alleged attack.By late evening, word had spread of Shaw's arrest, and a mob of about 150 white county residents gathered at the jail, demanding Shaw be released to them. Sheriff T. L. Henley tried to break up the mob unsuccessfully. The mob began prying apart the brick wall of the jail when 74-year-old judge Berry Mosely, who had been confined to bed with an illness, arrived and began talking down the mob.

In the meantime, the county sheriff began rounding up deputies, and called in nearby National Guard soldiers. Judge Mosely ordered the sheriff to take Shaw to Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. When the National Guard soldiers arrived, they backed a truck up to the jail and sped away to Athens before the mob could react.

No one was severely injured in the incident, but the damaged jail had to be repaired. During transit, Shaw allegedly assaulted police officers escorting him, and the police responded by shooting him three times.Two weeks later, Shaw was brought back to Danielsville to face trial. The mob reappeared, and Mosely again ordered Shaw moved away for his safety, this time to Royston.

That location was not far enough to protect him from the mob, which followed Shaw to the jail there. In April 1936, in the middle of the night, the mob stormed the jail, shot Shaw multiple times, and lynched him, leaving his hanging body to be found later. His lynchers posed for pictures memorializing the barbaric event.

His death was the 468th lynching in Georgia since 1889. Images of the lynching, featuring Shaw's battered corpse flanked by his attackers, were printed extensively by the national press including the Atlanta Daily World, The Crisis, The New York Times, and other newspapers. Shaw's lynching is referenced in archival material from the NAACP archives at the Library of Congress, and the story has been preserved and explored by historians of racial violence including Dr.

Nell Irvin Painter and Dr. Amy Louise Wood. Photographs of the lynching are also featured in author Richard Wright's landmark book, 12 Million Black Voices. To date, none of Shaw's murderers have been publicly identified or brought to justice, though many of their faces are clearly displayed in photos of the lynching.