[3] On August 12, 1911, Zachariah Walker, an African American resident of Coatesville, fired his handgun near a small group of immigrant workers, with the intention to scare them.

[4] Edgar Rice, a Worth Brothers Steel police officer, confronted Walker and threatened to club him.

Walker ended up in custody, where a district attorney and two police officers claimed that he confessed to the crime, saying, "I killed him easy.

"[10] Not long after the lynching, the Coatesville Record newspaper reported that a large crowd of townsfolk had eagerly watched Walker's burning; some even collected his charred bones after the fire died down.

"[15] Not long after all of Walker's suspected killers were acquitted, Governor John K. Tener called the residents of Coatesville a disgrace to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania for either carrying out or aiding murder.

[16] According to historian William Ziglar, the murder of Zachariah Walker became one of the best-known lynchings of its time because of its unusually brutal nature and because it took place in a state which was seen as historically tolerant of African Americans.

[17] Walker's lynching led many northern African Americans to worry about America's lack of racial justice.

After a meeting in Denver, Colorado, the National Negro Educational Association came to the conclusion that white people and African Americans lived under different rules in the same country.