Between 1865 and 1950, more than 6,500 African Americans were victims of racial terror lynching in the United States, including more than 655 documented in Mississippi and at least 6 in Newton County. After the Emancipation Proclamation and the Civil War, many white Americans remained committed to white supremacy, and in Mississippi the legacy of chattel slavery continued through exploitative sharecropping. Black people were lynched for exercising political rights, accusations of crimes, and perceived violations of social customs, while mob violence often included destruction or theft of Black property and was meant to instill fear in the entire Black community and enforce racial hierarchy. White elected officials, law enforcement officers, and community leaders were often involved or failed to hold those responsible accountable. In Newton, emancipated Black people established Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church in 1908, less than half a mile from the lynching site of former congregants Frank Johnson, Dee Dawkins, and William Fielder. On October 8, 1908, a Black sharecropper, Shep Jones, had a disagreement about his work schedule with his white employer, who assaulted him, and the altercation ended with the white man’s death. Jones fled Newton County, knowing he was at risk of lynching, and for the next two days a white mob terrorized the Black community in a manhunt for him, destroying Black-owned property, burning a Black church and meeting lodge near Gardlandville, and threatening Black families. On October 9, the mob hanged Jones’s father-in-law, William Fielder, from a tree near his home. On October 10, unable to find Jones, the mob shot, tortured, and lynched Dee Dawkins and Frank Johnson near Hickory because they were associated with him. The violence traumatized many Black residents and drove them to flee Newton County, while no one was held accountable for the lynchings or the destruction of Black property.