Claude Neal

On October 26, 1934, Claude Neal, the 23-year-old African-American victim, was brutally lynched by a group of white men who had stormed the county jail in Brewton, Alabama where the victim was being held after confessing to the murder of a 20-year-old white woman in Greenwood, Florida.  Following the victim’s removal from his jail cell, the men brought the victim back to Florida, tortured him for several hours in the woods, then murdered him.  The members of the lynching party then tied the victim’s body to the back of an automobile and dragged the body to the home of the deceased woman’s family where a large mob had gathered.