James Scott
1885 - 1923

On the afternoon of Sunday, April 29, 1923, a large white mob stormed the Boone County Jail in Columbia, Missouri and seized a Black man named James Scott, intent on lynching him. The day prior, Mr. Scott had received a trial date of May 21 and remained detained in jail awaiting trial. However, nearly 1,500 angry mob participants were determined to carry out violent retaliation against Mr. Scott without regard for his legal right to due process. Seizing Mr. Scott from the jail, the mob brutally beat and dragged him to the Stewart Road Bridge near the University of Missouri and hanged him from the bridge in a public spectacle lynching. Despite hundreds of eye-witnesses and five indictments of identified mob participants, no one was convicted or held accountable for the racial terror lynching of James Scott.