Between 1865 and 1950, at least 6,500 Black people were victims of racial terror lynching in the United States. After the Civil War, violent resistance to equal rights for African Americans and an ideology of white supremacy led to fatal violence against Black women, men, and children, who were often falsely accused of violating social norms or crimes. In Maryland, where slavery remained legal in 1860 and more than 87,000 Black people were enslaved, racial violence and lynching emerged after emancipation as a form of terrorism intended to intimidate Black people and reinforce racial hierarchy and segregation; at least 40 lynchings have been documented in the state. On July 13, 1885, a white mob lynched Howard Cooper, a 15-year-old Black child, at the former Baltimore County Jail after he had been accused of assault and rape near Rockland, convicted by an all-white jury in less than a minute even though the victim did not testify that she was raped, and denied relief on appeal. As attorneys pursued further review, the mob stormed the jail, dragged him from his cell, hanged him from a nearby sycamore tree, displayed his body for residents and train passengers, and distributed pieces of the rope as souvenirs. His mother, Henrietta, buried him in an unmarked grave in Ruxton, and no one was ever held accountable.