Sidney Randolph, a Black Georgia native in his mid-twenties, was lynched in Rockville on July 4, 1896, allegedly by a group of white men from Montgomery County. He was suspected of attacking the Buxton family of Gaithersburg and killing one family member in May 1896. Detectives from Washington and Baltimore investigated, but local Gaithersburg residents suspected Randolph. As a stranger to the area, he likely had no motive, and he maintained his innocence. He was imprisoned from May 25 until July 4, when, before trial, a masked mob kidnapped him from the county jail in Rockville, at the current location of the County Council Building. The mob brutally beat Randolph and hanged him from a tree on present-day Hungerford Drive. His murderers were never identified. On November 23, 1896, a Montgomery County Circuit Court Grand Jury Inquest said they believed Randolph committed the assault, but failed to charge anyone in the crime of his lynching. Investigative journalist and NAACP co-founder Ida B. Wells said, “Many a negro is lynched as a scapegoat for another man’s crime. An editorial in one of the papers clearly states that the lynching of Sidney Randolph…was instigated by the real murderer.”
