[1][2][3] They had only been legally accused of the crime a few minutes before they were kidnapped from the courthouse, chained to trees, and tortured with a blow torch.

[5] The county had recently commenced the first legal hanging in its history six months prior, when Wilson Pullen, a white man, was convicted of murdering his landlord, Dave McClelland.

[17] On December 30, 1936, George Sam Windham, a 40-year-old crossroads county grocer, was standing in the back of his store, six miles east of Duck Hill, Mississippi, eating sardines and crackers for dinner.

[18][19] "Neighbors say...a car drove up and stopped about 50 yards from Windham's store, and in about ten minutes they heard a noise, which evidently was the gunshot, but at the time they thought it was only a firecracker and were not alarmed.

[18] On December 31, the day after the murder, Sheriff Edgar E. Wright stated that Windham's store had been "ransacked" and his pockets had been "turned wrong-side out".

[19] Sheriff Wright also declared: "...the assailant was familiar with the vicinity in which the crime occurred and with Mr. Windham's business and his personal habits."

"[19] Sheriff Wright handed Elijah and Joe Ed to George Windham's brother, Gus, allowing him to have unaccounted for time with the men.

"[30] Maintaining his innocence, Dorrah cried and reiterated that black people in the area loved "Mr. Sam" [Windham].

and Elijah Dorrah, 55-year-old Leroy Weldon, and 35-year-old Bit Reed, were detained for several weeks because they were "in the vicinity" of Duck Hill on the night of the murder searching for some cows that had strayed.

[31] In addition, on January 29, a black man was detained by police officers in New York City because he "fit the description" of Townes.

[3] Townes had reportedly escaped from the Grenada County Jail—with a white fellow prisoner—two weeks (or three days) prior to the murder, where he had been imprisoned for allegedly stealing corn.

[3] In December 1936, the 25-year-old was living with his wife five miles north of Duck Hill in Elliot, where he had recently contracted with 67-year-old Micajah Purnell Sturdivant—a white man from Vance—to be a sharecropper on Sturdivant's property.

[3] It was reported that, on the night that Townes ran, he snuck back on the property to get his wife, officially making them both fugitives.

"[1][36] "On the afternoon of the murder, Townes is believed to have stolen a gun and is said to have gotten another negro to buy shells for him in Elliot of the kind with which Windham was killed."

[3][33] Sheriff Edgar E. Wright obtained a "small Kodak 10-cent snapshot of Townes" and sent it to the Jackson Bureau of Investigation where "the tiny picture was enlarged.

[41] Curtis claimed that he, Sheriff Wright, and deputies Blakely and McGurrah, were incapacitated by six men who tied their hands behind their backs.

[1] In the woods, a mob estimated to number 500 people—including women and children—watched as Townes and McDaniels were dragged from the bus, stripped of their shirts to their waists, and chained to two trees.

[1][39] One of the mob members brought out a "white-hot" plumbers blow torch, applying "the blue-white flame" to the bare skin of Townes and McDaniels while demanding, "Tell all you know!

"[1][42][39] The Sheriff claimed that, under torture, Townes "readily" confessed to shooting Windham through the window, but said that McDaniels was the mastermind of the alleged robbery.

[44] The mob then turned its attention onto Townes, described by officers as a "dangerous negro," who was then tied around an oak tree roughly a foot in diameter.

[39] However, while the mob had him under duress, they "allowed" him to confess to other unsolved crimes in the area, including the burning of houses and the theft of livestock.

It was a slow process, punctuated by screams and sobbing, and by the time he had confessed in the detail that the mob wanted, he was partially conscious held up by chains.

"[47] The mob claimed that the Townes and McDaniels, under torture, implicated another black man in Windham's killing, "Shorty" Dorrah, who lived nearby.

"[1] Deputy Sheriff Hugh Curtis stated the lynching took place in a "quickly, quietly and orderly" fashion.

[1] However District Attorney, Clarence Morgan contradicted their statements when he said that Sheriff Wright told him that the mob was "from some other county.

[55][56] The day after the lynching, the governor later joked: "Just as I made that statement, a big placard fell from the wall right at the speaker's stand.

"[58] It was estimated to have been seen by more than 180,000 visitors in New York, however after receiving criticism of the photo for being "too powerful, too striking and causing visitors to pause and gaze, thus interrupting the flow of the movement and the flow of the message," curator Edward Steichen withdrew the image eleven weeks after the show opened:[59][60] "[I] felt that this violent picture might become a focal point in the reception of The Family of Man...[It] provided a form of dissonance to the theme, so we removed it for that purpose.

"The lynchers, of course, are the worse variety –– fiends for the hour committing mob murder with such maniacal brutality one wonders if they can be human.

"[63]Internationally, German newspapers publicized the murders to support Nazi government propaganda, contrasting the violence of the lynchings to the "humane" Nuremberg racial laws that the Reich had passed against Jewish citizens.

[62][64][65] The lynchings had also occurred at the moment that the House of Representatives was debating Rep. Joseph Gavagan's (D-New York) anti-lynching legislation.