He was the second of two reported lynching victims in Alexandria; the first, almost two years earlier, was Joseph H. McCoy.
Benjamin Thomas was arrested on August 7, 1899 accused of assaulting the 8-year-old daughter of a white neighbor.
The evening of the next day, August 8, beginning around 10 PM a mob of hundreds of white residents surrounded the jail where was being held and demanded he be released to them.
[1][2][3][4] Beginning in 2020, the city of Alexandria has begun honoring Benjamin Thomas on the anniversary of his lynching.
[1] In 2022, the city held a ceremony involving soil collected from locations connected to Thomas's life to transport to the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama.