The 1875 Pensacola lynchings and the "Right Way" to protest racial injustice

In August 1875, two Black men suspected of raping a white woman In Escambia County, Florida were pulled from their jail cell in the middle of the night and hanged near Pensacola's Seville Square. The 100-person mob then riddled their bodies with bullets. In the following days, racial tensions nearly boiled over as a local black militia was met by armed white residents called into service by Pensacola's mayor, a former Confederate colonel. This event was the first recorded lynching in Pensacola and presaged the campaign of terror and disenfranchisement that would be waged against Black residents in subsequent decades