Between 1877 and 1950, thousands of black people in the United States were victims of lynching and racial violence as racial terror against African Americans was used to resist emancipation and equal rights, intimidate black people, enforce racial hierarchy and segregation, uphold white supremacy, and sustain political, social, and economic exploitation, especially in the South. White mobs often acted with impunity, sometimes with the complicity of law enforcement, and terror lynchings could include burnings, mutilation, and crowds numbering in the thousands. More than 330 documented lynchings of black people took place in Texas, including those of Lige Daniels and Buddy Evans in Shelby County. On August 2, 1920, Lige Daniels, an African American man held in the county jail in Center, Texas awaiting trial after being accused of killing a white woman, was attacked before any evidence of guilt had been reviewed in court. As news of his arrest spread and a warning arrived from San Augustine that he must be killed that day, a mob of white men, despite the Governor's order to protect him, broke into the jail, seized him from his cell, and hanged him from an oak tree in the courthouse yard. No proof of guilt was required, and although participants posed for photographs beneath his brutalized body, no one was held accountable.