The Price family were African-American suspects in the robbery of a Wilmington, Delaware gun store.

While raiding the Price house Patrolman Thomas L. Zebley (sometimes spelled Scebley) was killed and Officer Harry F. Pierce was shot twice in the lungs.

[3] As news of the shooting spread an angry white mob grew and tried to lynch the three brothers.

[5] This uprising was one of several incidents of civil unrest that began in the so-called American Red Summer, of 1919.

The Summer consisted of terrorist attacks on black communities, and white oppression in over three dozen cities and counties.