A 1940 prison photo of Cleo Wright. Two years later, Wright was lynched. A white mob dragged him from his cell to to a black neighborhood and burned him alive in view of two church congregations. It was the first lynching to occur after the United States entered World War II, Missouri [800 x 493].

[Lynching of Cleo Wright](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_of_Cleo_Wright)

[A lengthy PDF about the lynching](https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/232566837.pdf)

Wright was lynched after being accused of trying to rape and slashing a white woman and trying to murder a white police officer. He was absolutely guilty of both charges. He was found less than a mile away from the scene with a bloodied knife. Wright was critically wounded after stabbing his arresting officer in the mouth. Said officer shot him several times in self-defense. Wright admitted his guilt shortly before being lynched. I did not mention this in the title for several reasons. For one, it was still murder. Secondly, Wright was already dying from his bullet wounds and to burn him alive was a seemingly pointless act of sadism. Thirdly, it was not pointless; the murder of Wright was explicitly intended to intimidate local black people.

In fact, Wright himself was actually drunk at the time to his death. Before he was kidnapped by the mob, one of the guards took pity on him and let him drink a lot of whiskey.

But I thought racism solely exists in the South /s