An unflinching account, James McGovern’s Anatomy of a Lynching
carefully reconstructs the grim events surrounding the death of
Claude Neal—one of the estimated three thousand blacks to die at
the hands of southern lynch mobs in the six decades between the
1880s and the outbreak of World War II. Neal was accused of the
brutal rape and murder of Lola Cannidy, a young white woman he
had known since childhood. On October 26, 1934, he was taken
from his jail cell by a well-organized mob. The following night,
the mob tortured Neal and hung him by the neck to the point of
strangulation—repeating the process until the victim was dead.
Neal’s body was then further mutilated by a large crowd of men,
women, and children who had gathered to witness, celebrate, and
assist in the lynching. Finally, the battered corpse was put on
display, suspended as a warning from a tree in front of the
Jackson County, Florida, courthouse. The next morning, under the
headline GIRL SLAYER LYNCHED THIS A.M., a local newspaper duly
reported