Judge, Jury, & Executioner: The Story of the 1936 McCamy Lynching in Dalton, Georgia

In 1936, deep in the throes of The Great Depression, Americans reelected President Franklin Delano Roosevelt for a second term, hopeful that his promise of a “New Deal” would provide economic recovery to a nation where 1 in 5 citizens were unemployed.  The High Plains region of the country was being tormented with dust storms that destroyed crops and made farming nearly impossible for most of the decade. The year also saw the black American sprinter Jesse Owens win gold in the Berlin Olympic Games, infuriating Adolf Hitler who had proclaimed Germany’s athletes as superior, due to their white race.  

By the year 1936, it had been 71 years since the Civil War ended and the acrimony that tore the nation asunder was largely thought to have mended.  The automobile had replaced the horse and buggy as the primary means of local transportation and the Tennessee Valley Authority, created three years earlier, slowly began introducing electricity to rural areas.  Many were hopeful of moving toward a new era of progress and the possibility that the country’s economic decline may soon be behind them.

1936 was also the year that the last known lynching in Dalton, Georgia took place.

Less than one hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation and 160 years after Thomas Jefferson wrote in The Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal”, an angry mob of local townspeople broke into the local jail and served as judge, jury, and executioner. 

A.L. “Lon” McCamy had worked in Dalton as a dishwasher in the Hotel Dalton.  Hospitality was considered a coveted job for blacks at the time, due to the fact that they were not allowed to work in the local mills.  However, McCamy lost this job and was forced to work as a general laborer around town.  One of these jobs was serving as a yard man for Mrs. Eva McCamy, whose husband had recently passed away after serving for many years as the head of the local utility company.  Her son Carl was a prominent local attorney in town and they were considered one of Dalton’s leading families.

The chain of events altering Lon McCamy’s life began to unfold late one Friday evening in early September 1936.  The official story plays out something like this:  Hearing a noise in her home, Eva peered through the dark rooms until she saw a black man inside and screamed, causing the intruder to escape.  Neighbors, hearing the nearby commotion, called the police.  

There were “unofficial” versions of what happened as well.  Many people whispered that Eva saw a peeping Tom dressed in blackface at the window, not McCamy.  Others claimed that there were scandalous rumors that Eva invited a black man into her home and was spotted by a visitor.  Fearing her reputation, she screamed and the man hastily ran away.  A wealthy young white woman keeping company with a black man in the Jim Crow South was highly taboo and, in the small town of Dalton, one that would surely ruin Eva’s standing in social circles.

Whatever actually happened, Lon McCamy was arrested the following morning, despite his claim that he had been with his girlfriend across town at the time of the incident.  He was the first black man they had found and that was good enough for their taste for blood.  Sheriff J.T. Bryant said that Eva was touched by McCamy and that neighbors had seen Lon running from the house.  These claims were never proven to be true and, if they had, McCamy would have been charged with attempted rape.  In 1936, Georgia law read that a black man entering the room of a white woman without her consent could be charged as a rapist.  Eva’s son Carl, perhaps not wishing to expose his family to scandal, declared that they would instead press charges for burglary. 

In small towns like Dalton, GA, it doesn’t take long for rumors and gossip to spread like and outrage over what poor Eva must have suffered.  Facts were inconvenient and meddlesome nuisances that were getting in the way of justice on her behalf.  

Inside the jail cell, the view for McCamy wasn’t much better.  Although blacks technically had the right to vote due to the 15th Amendment, most Southern state legislatures enacted “Black Codes”, heavily restrictive laws which governed Black citizen’s behavior and denied them suffrage and other civil rights.  If one wasn’t on the voter roll, one also wouldn’t be in a jury pool which meant that, even if McCamy went to trial, he was almost assured to be convicted by an all white jury.

His verdict wouldn’t take that long. Early on Sunday morning - two days after the alleged incident around 150 men, most armed and wearing handkerchiefs around their faces, surrounded the jail.  Sheriff Bryant later claimed to be asleep inside his office at the jail.  Several of the mob entered the first floor of the jail and John Pitts, the guard on duty, willingly unlocked McCamy and allowed him to be taken away by the crowd.  Later, when interviewed, Pitts changed his story multiple times and stated that he wasn’t able to identify any of the assailants.

Once outside the jail, the story goes that McCamy was able to briefly break free from his captors and began to run. It’s difficult to imagine McCamy having the ability to escape from 150 men but, even if true, he didn’t get far.  Shots were fired at McCamy in a lot next to the jail, likely killing him instantly.  The mob then tied him to the back of a car, dragging him to the site of a local rock crusher.  He was then strung to a telephone pole and more gunshots were fired into him.  He was then pulled down and left in a ditch, found by Sheriff Bryant hours later.

There was no official investigation conducted at the time.  No identification of any of the members of the lynching crowd have ever been made.  The story about the lynching never ran in the Dalton paper at the time of the incident, even though newspapers in Chattanooga and Atlanta covered the event.  News made it as far as New York City, where the NAACP headquarter flew it’s flag at half-mast alongside another flag that read, “A Man Was Lynched Yesterday.”

Lon McCamy’s family claimed the body and he was buried in the local cemetery without fanfare.  His friends and family were said to be warned by deputies that they would “get the same thing” if they caused trouble and didn’t get off the streets.  

As the decades went by, few spoke about it and time had claimed those who knew about the tragedy first hand.  Often, if we try hard enough to forget an unpleasant moment, we can actually convince ourselves that it didn’t exist.  But to a group of citizens over ninety years later, it did indeed exist and it was decided to do the right thing.  

On September 7, 2024, The Whitfield Remembrance Project held a ceremony commemorating McCamy’s death and to bring awareness around racial reconciliation.  Partnering with the Equal Justice Initiative out of Montgomery, Alabama, the gathering began a physical and symbolic journey from the site of the old jail to McCamy’s gravesite.  A new headstone was purchased and a proper & dignified commital was finally provided.

In the nearly ninety years since the McCamy lynching, our nation has continued to struggle between what Lincoln described as our “better angels” of our nature and, at times, battling our demons of hate, racism, and bigotry.  It’s convenient to say we are an evolved society, incapable of acts of atrocity like this in our world today.  It’s also equally as frightening to see that our angry mobs don’t even wear masks anymore.  Look no further to Charlottesville, VA, Minneapolis, MN, and towns across the nation where racial tensions have boiled over in the last few years into ugly and violent confrontations.  We have miles to go before we sleep on the issue of racial equality.

So why do we wrestle with this today?  Many years ago William Faulkner wrote, “The past isn’t dead…it isn’t even the past.”  Another fine author, Wright Thompson, (whose excellent book The Barn documents the murder of Emmett Till  and the subsequent cover up efforts) wrote “If you don’t know where you come from, you don’t know who you are…and, if you don’t know who you are, you don’t exist.”  It's a powerful reminder that, while our past doesn't have to define us, it does shape the lens in which we view the world. Human beings are capable of the worst atrocities one can imagine, yet are also endowed with acts of decency and kindness.

We are in a period of time where we get to decide which one we choose.

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