Between 1877 and 1950, thousands of African Americans were victims of mob violence and lynching across the United States as many white Southerners resisted equal rights and sought to uphold white supremacy through intimidation and fatal violence. Lynching became the most public and notorious form of racial terrorism, and state and federal officials largely tolerated these lawless killings by failing to hold participants accountable. Many African Americans were lynched for resisting economic exploitation, violating perceived social customs, engaging in interracial relationships, or being accused of crimes even without evidence, as white mobs seized victims from homes, public places, jails, prisons, courtrooms, and police custody without fear of legal repercussions. In South Carolina, at least 189 racial terror lynchings were documented between 1877 and 1950, including at least four in Greenville County. On the night of August 16, 1899, an elderly African American man, Tom Keith, was lynched by a white mob after he was accused of falling asleep in the same room as white children. Keith, described in news reports as old and trusted, lived in the home of his white employer, J.B. Hawkins, Jr., and had long worked on Hawkins's farm in Greenville. After Hawkins found Keith asleep in the room with his daughter and son that morning, he reportedly struck Keith on the head with a gun. Keith said he must have wandered into the room by accident after drinking the night before. Hawkins told him to pack his things and leave town or he would kill him, and Keith left. When Hawkins's white neighbors heard the story, they organized a mob to find Keith, likely captured him somewhere along or near what is now Roe Ford Road, tied him to a tree, shot him multiple times, and threw his body, weighed down with stones, into the Saluda River. No one involved in Tom Keith's lynching was held accountable.