Between 1877 and 1950, thousands of black people in the United States were victims of lynching and racial violence, especially in the South, where lynching of African Americans functioned as racial terrorism to intimidate black people and enforce racial hierarchy and segregation. After the Civil War, violent resistance to equal rights for African Americans and an ideology of white supremacy fueled decades of political, social, and economic exploitation, and lynching became the most public and notorious form of terror and subordination. White mobs often acted with impunity, sometimes with the cooperation or surrender of prisoners by law enforcement officials, and terror lynchings could include burning and mutilation before crowds of thousands. Although many victims' names were never recorded, more than 300 documented lynchings took place in Alabama, including fourteen in Lowndes County, one of the ten highest totals in the state. In early 1900, a white mob in Letohatchee, Alabama, lynched a black man without investigation or trial after he was accused of killing a white man. Afterward, local black resident Jim Cross condemned the violence, and on March 3, 1900, a mob of white men shot and killed him in the doorway of his Letohatchee home, then entered and killed his wife, son, and daughter. No one was arrested for those killings. On July 24, 1917, William Powell and his brother, whose first name was reported as Samuel or Jesse, were also lynched in Letohatchee. While some white newspapers claimed they were wanted for highway robbery, more detailed reports said the young black men had merely been "insolent" to a white farmer after brushing against his horse on the road. After an argument, the Powell brothers were arrested, seized by a mob of 100 white men, and hanged from a tree along the road between Letohatchee and Hayneville. No one was punished. These seven people lynched in Letohatchee were victims of racial terrorism aimed at restoring white supremacy while denying black people the rights of citizenship and the protection of the law.