Between 1877 and 1950, at least 318 documented racial terror lynchings took place in Florida, including 8 in Duval County, as part of a wider era in which thousands of African Americans were killed across the United States to intimidate Black people and enforce racial hierarchy and segregation. During the Red Summer of 1919, anti-Black riots erupted in more than two dozen cities, and in Jacksonville, after officials refused to investigate the killings of several Black taxi drivers by White riders, Black cab drivers began refusing White passengers for their own protection. After a White rider who had been refused service fired into a crowd of Black people in mid-August, police alleged that Bowman Cook and John Morine, two Black veterans of World War I, killed him on August 20, 1919, and arrested them. On September 8, 1919, before either man could stand trial, a mob of 50 White men abducted them from the Duval County Jail, drove them to North Main Street and Cemetery Road, and fatally shot them. The mob left John Morine's body in a ditch, then dragged Bowman Cook's corpse behind a car for nearly 50 blocks before dumping his mangled remains on Hogan Street near the Confederate monument in Hemming Park. No one was ever arrested or charged for their lynching.