[1] According to the 1920 census John Harrison was thirty-eight years old, married, and worked as a laborer in a Malvern lumber mill.

[4] In early 1922 he began to show troubling behavior including stalking and threatening women.

One of these woman reported his actions to Hot Spring County, Arkansas Sheriff Donald F. Bray who arrested Harrison in February 1922.

[3] Word of his arrest and that he was harassing white women spread and a mob quickly gathered on the evening of February 2, 1922.

[3] [5] In 1923 John Henry Harrison's sister, Callie Henry, tried to sue Sheriff D. S. Bray, deputies W. T. Gamble and S. H. Leiper, and W. H. Cooper for his death while in their custody as well as alleged leaders of the mob, including Clarence Chamberlain, R. S. Hodges, Leonard Stanley, and Ray Galina, but the courts ruled against her the following year.