Following the Civil War, resistance to rights and equality for African Americans and an ideology of white supremacy led to fatal violence against Black women, men, and children. Lynching emerged as the most public and notorious form of racial terrorism, intended to intimidate Black people and enforce racial hierarchy and segregation. Thousands of Black people were victims of racial terror lynching in the United States between 1865 and 1950, often after accusations of violating social customs or committing crimes even when there was no evidence. White mobs seized victims from homes, public places, jails, prisons, courtrooms, and even police custody without fear of legal repercussions, and these lynchings often included burnings and mutilation before crowds of thousands. Over 300 racial terror lynchings have been documented in non-Southern states, including at least 18 in Indiana. On February 26, 1901, in Vigo County near the old Wabash River Wagon Bridge, a white mob lynched George Ward, an African American husband and father of two, after the shooting and stabbing death of a white woman near Terre Haute the previous day. Though there were no witnesses, Ward was arrested and reports of an alleged confession spread. Less than an hour after he was taken into custody, a white mob formed outside the jail, broke in around noon with a battering ram, seized and beat him until he collapsed, dragged him to the bridge, and hanged him from a trestle with a noose of rope and chain. The mob then cut down and burned his body for hours on the west riverbank as at least 1000 white men, women, and children watched, and some collected fragments of his remains as souvenirs. Terrorized by the lynching, many members of Terre Haute's Black community fled for fear of further violence. None of the perpetrators or spectators were held accountable, and such impunity and silence fostered an era of violent Jim Crow segregation and racial bias whose legacy continues to be confronted today.