In Black & White: Lynching & the Death Penalty were Two Sides of the Same Coin - Racist Roots: Origins of North Carolina’s Death Penalty

Newspaper articles of the time show how lynching and court-imposed death sentences were two sides of the same coin.

Three Black men were lynched in Salisbury in 1906:

New Berne Weekly Journal (New Bern, North Carolina) · Fri, Aug 10, 1906 · Page 1

Although “thousands” of local men formed the mob, other members of the community opposed the lynching, arguing that it was embarrassing and unnecessary. As this Charlotte News opinion piece pointed out, “although the evidence against any of the negros was to a degree slight,” the trial would have been swift and the three men would have been found guilty and hanged anyway:

The Charlotte News (Charlotte, North Carolina) · Tue, Aug 7, 1906 · Page 4

Other North Carolina Black men accused of crimes escaped lynch mobs only to be quickly and publicly executed. Neill Sellers and Davie Brown “narrowly averted” being lynched on September 5, 1904 in Bladen County:

The Caucasian (Clinton, North Carolina) · Thu, Sep 8, 1904 · Page 3

“At Clarkton today the feeling had subsided to a large degree, and it was thought that no other attempt would be made to lynch the negroes and the law would be allowed to take its course.”

They were sentenced to death a few weeks later:

The Farmer and Mechanic (Raleigh, North Carolina) · Tue, Oct 18, 1904 · Page 8

“Before dismissing the jury Judge Ward took occasion to commend the people of Bladen on… the restraining of their passions at the time when their blood fairly boiled with rage on account of the nature of the hellish crime.”

Sellers and Brown were publicly hanged the next month:

The Cleveland Star (Shelby, North Carolina) · Wed, Nov 23, 1904 · Page 4

“The crowd [of over 2,000 people] was noisy and the gallows… was torn away by the crowd and cut up, as was the rope, in small pieces, and carried away. People here are confident of Brown and Sellers’ guilt, though they denied it to the last.”

Next – A Monument to Slavery Hangs Over N.C.’s Highest Court

UPDATE: In December 2020, approximately two months after the launch of Racist Roots, the N.C. Supreme Court voted to remove the portrait of Thomas Ruffin at the recommendation of an advisory commission. However, its removal does not change the fact that Ruffin looked down at the justices and lawyers as they argued appeals on behalf of more than 400 death row prisoners sentenced under our “modern” death penalty law. Many of them remain on death row today.

There is perhaps no clearer symbol of slavery’s lingering influence on the death penalty than the portrait that looms over the North Carolina Supreme Court, whose seven justices must review every death sentence. The courtroom is filled with portraits of former chief justices, but the painting of North Carolina’s third chief justice, Thomas Ruffin, is three times as large as the rest and occupies a place of honor directly behind the bench.

Ruffin served as chief justice from 1833 to 1852. He distinguished himself not only as a cruel slaver whose overseers burned enslaved people and rubbed salt and pepper into their wounds, but as the author of one of the nation’s most extreme pro-slavery decisions.

In the 1829 case State v. Mann, Ruffin held that a slave owner could not be prosecuted for shooting an enslaved woman because “the power of the master must be absolute, to render the submission of the slave perfect.” This precedent-setting decision had horrific consequences for enslaved people.

The power of the master must be absolute, to render the submission of the slave perfect.

Statues of Ruffin have recently been removed from the N.C. Court of Appeals and other courthouses around the state, but his portrait ...