The Last Lynching in Northern Virginia: Seeking Truth at Rattlesnake Mountain (True Crime) by Hall Jim

Author:Hall, Jim [Hall, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2016-09-12T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

SUICIDE DOUBTED

Dr. Davis ruled that Thompson committed suicide, but Fauquier residents disagreed, and newspapers throughout Virginia challenged the verdict. The decision was seen by many as a rush to judgment, an attempt by officials to cleanse the community of any responsibility for Thompson’s death.

One published report noted that a posse of six men, armed with “knives, picks, shotguns, ropes and mowing blades,” captured Thompson in an orchard on Rattlesnake Mountain and immediately strung him up. 103 The Evening Star, a daily newspaper in Washington, reported that Thompson had a bullet hole in his head. The wounds occurred before the body was torched, the Star reported. Its story was headlined, “Suicide Doubted in Death of Man.” 104 The (Richmond) News Leader called for a new investigation, saying that Virginia is a state “that protects even the worst criminal from the madness of the mob.” “The case is certainly not to be written down as a lynching unless positive evidence is forthcoming,” the paper added. “Negroes, however, very rarely commit suicide, and persons who find a dead body hanging from a tree in the woods are not apt to set fire to it before notifying the sheriff.” 105

Soon other newspapers joined the protest. The (Norfolk) Journal and Guide, a black-owned paper, asked, “If this is a suicide, what’s a lynching?” 106 The Chicago Defender, the nation’s most influential black newspaper, declared in a headline that “Suicide Is Now Synonymous with Lynching in Va.” 107 The Northern Virginia Daily called on authorities to arrest those responsible for burning the body, calling it a “ghoulish and futile” act. “To sanction such acts is to invite their recurrence,” the paper noted. 108 Three years later, the Richmond Planet, a black paper, when recounting Thompson’s death, said, “Virginia accepted this strange [suicide] verdict despite the fact that the circumstances surrounding the case made such a conclusion incredible.”

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