Following the Civil War, violent resistance to rights for African Americans, a need for cheap labor, and an ideology of white supremacy led to fatal violence against Black women, men, and children. Between 1877 and 1950, thousands of Black people in the United States were victims of racial terror lynching, a public and notorious form of racial terrorism intended to intimidate Black people and enforce racial hierarchy and segregation. Many were lynched after accusations of violating social customs, engaging in interracial relationships, or committing crimes, even when there was no evidence, and white mobs often seized victims from jails, prisons, courtrooms, or police custody without fear of legal repercussions. These lynchings often included burnings and mutilation, sometimes before crowds of thousands, and many victims' names were never recorded. In Georgia, at least 592 racial terror lynchings have been documented. After Reconstruction was abandoned in 1877, white mobs from Lithonia terrorized the Black community through lynchings that denied Black people their constitutional rights and equal protection under the law. On July 27, 1887, a white mob from Lithonia lynched Reuben Hudson near the Georgia Railroad stop in Redan after a white woman reported an assault and a conductor presumed Hudson fit her description; although officers were legally required to protect him, they surrendered him to the mob in Redan without resistance as they escorted him by train, and the mob dragged, tortured, and hanged him despite his pleas of innocence. Five years later, on April 2, 1892, a white mob from Lithonia chased two unidentified Black men after a young white girl reported an assault, and when the mob returned without them, it was generally understood that they were lynched. Despite a functioning legal system in DeKalb County, participants in these lynchings were not held accountable.