Between 1865 and 1950, thousands of Black people were victims of lynching in the United States, where racial terror lynching became a notorious public form of violence used to enforce racial hierarchy and segregation. These killings were often carried out in prominent community locations before crowds of white men, women, and children, while law enforcement and local, state, and federal officials frequently failed to stop them and sometimes tolerated, encouraged, or participated in them. Over 593 lynchings have been documented in Georgia, including at least one in Gwinnett County. Shortly after midnight on April 8, 1911, a mob of at least 200 white men lynched Charles Hale, a Black man, in downtown Lawrenceville after breaking into the Lawrenceville Jail and abducting him from his cell without resistance from armed police officers responsible for protecting him. The mob dragged Hale to a telephone pole near the Gwinnett County Courthouse, hanged him, and repeatedly shot his body, and law enforcement allowed his body to hang until the next day, when white families, including children, posed for photographs with it. A sign hung from Hale read, “Please do not wake him.” News reports said that on April 7 a white farmer reported that his wife had been assaulted, and a posse of white men formed by the sheriff encountered Hale in nearby woods and captured him. Hale was lynched before he had any chance to defend himself against the accusation. County officials later removed his body and buried it in a paupers cemetery, made no effort to hold a coroner's inquest or identify mob participants, and none of the mob members or officials who failed to intervene were held accountable.