Elwood Higginbotham Marker

Elwood Higginbotham was the seventh and last Black man lynched in Lafayette County, Mississippi between 1885 to 1935.

Higginbotham, a Black sharecropper, had been arrested around three months earlier for allegedly murdering Glen D. Roberts in Oxford, Mississippi. According to reports, Higginbotham and Roberts had an argument, and Roberts asked Higginbotham to come out of his home to talk, but Higginbotham refused. When Roberts entered Higginbotham’s house, Higginbotham allegedly shot Roberts to protect his family [1]. Higginbotham then escaped into Ponotoc, Mississippi, and a manhunt was under way for two days before he was found by the Ponotoc police [2].

Higginbotham was then moved to Jackson, Mississippi in order to be kept safe before his trial. He plead not guilty to Roberts's murder, and if he had been found guilty, he would have received the death penalty. There were no signs that the case would result in a lynching until rumors spread that the jury deciding Higginbotham's fate was hung: two of the twelve jurors were voting for acquittal [3]. When these rumors began circulating, a white mob formed and swarmed the jail where Higginbotham was being held. Although the Sheriff allegedly attempted to stop the lynching, he was overpowered and Higginbotham was carried away and murdered. No one was ever charged or prosecuted for the killing.

After his death, Higginbotham's family fled Mississippi to avoid any further violence. They did not return until a marker, placed near the site where Higginbotham had been murdered, was erected by the Equal Justice Initiative in 2018.

Higginbotham's lynching serves as a reminder that violent racism against African Americans continued to go unpunished in the South and especially Mississippi for far longer than many of us would like to admit.

[1] “Upstate Negro Is Lynched By Mob Jury Debates Fate,” McComb Daily Journal, September 19, 1935.

[2] “Captured Slayer Makes Confession,” Oxford Eagle, May 30, 1935.

[3] “Mob Lynches Higginbotham Negro,” Oxford Eagle, September 19, 1935.

[4] “Elwood Higginbotham--Hero of Sharecroppers,” Daily Worker, September 24, 1935.

[5] Vanessa Gregory, "A Lynching's Long Shadow," The New York Times, April 25, 2018.