Samuel Smith was a 15-year-old African-American youth who was lynched by a white mob, hanged and shot in Nolensville, Tennessee, on December 15, 1924.
At 1 a.m. on December 13, 1924, a white grocer named Ike Eastwood reportedly heard noises outside his house, grabbed a gun, and found an African-American man, Jim Smith, in his garage.
[1] At midnight on December 15, 1924, Samuel Smith was seized by a group of six or seven masked and armed men from his hospital room in Nashville.
[1] The lynching was watched by onlookers in thirty cars, many of whom shot guns as soon as Smith was hanged, before they drove away.
[1] They left the body hanging at the scene, about 200 yards north of the Williamson county line along the Nolensville Pike.
[2] Prominent city residents wrote an open letter to Governor Austin Peay and Sheriff Riley asking them to bring the perpetrators of the lynching to justice.
[2] An article in The Leaf-Chronicle noted, "Such open defiance and violation of law cannot escape detection unless public opinion in that community approves it.