The Lynching of George Armwood
The horrific murder occurred in Princess Anne in 1933.
Before the brutal murder of Matthew Williams lynching on Friday, December 4, 1931 at 8:05 pm and others before (and after him), the harrowing story of George Armwood in 1933 had sent shivers down the spines of the people of Maryland. Armwood was dragged from a cell, stabbed, and then lynched on a tree before some 2000 white folks in Princess Anne baying for his blood. But the horror was not over as he was brought down, burnt and his charred body dragged through the town with his body parts thrown towards the quarters of the Blacks to make a sandwich with.
On October 16, 71-year-old Mary Denston, the mother of a white police officer, was raped and assaulted by a Black man as she walked to her Princess Anne, Maryland, home from the post office. Denston identified her attacker as George Armwood. Police picked Armwood up at the home of his employer and transported him to the Salisbury Jail 10-miles away.
On October 18, 1933, a mob of 2,000 or more white people from the town of Princess Anne, Maryland, beat, hanged, dragged, and burned a Black man named George Armwood, to death. The intellectually-disabled man had been accused of assaulting and raping the 71-year-old mother of a local police officer. He was 22 or 23 years old at the time.
Armwood Transported Back to Princess Anne
When angry mobs gathered outside the jail, police transported Armwood to the Cecil County jail for his protection. Mobs again formed and while the sheriff quietened them down for a while, they returned again. Police moved Armwood a third time, this time to the Baltimore County Jail. A judge determined he would not be safe no matter what jail he was placed in. Police then transported him back to Princess Anne.
Later that evening, a mob of about 1,000 people gathered in front of the Princess Anne Jail housing Armwood. The sheriff pleaded with the crowds to behave civilly and fired tear gas into the crowd to attempt to quieten them. Nothing worked. Instead, they became angrier and more determined to attack George Armwood.
Mob Forces Their Way Into Jail
The angry mob soon forced their way inside the jail and headed to the special cells housing Black inmates. They found Armwood attempting to hide underneath his mattress. The mob grabbed Armwood and dragged him outside of the jail where they tied a noose around his neck.
The mob proceeded to cut off both of Armwood’s ears and ripped the gold teeth from his mouth. They beat and kicked the man, then repeatedly stabbed him before tying him to the back of a pickup truck and transporting him to a local man’s house where he was hanged from a tree.
After Armwood was dead, the mob cut him down from the tree and dragged his body back to the courthouse on Williams Street. The mob hanged his body from a telephone pole before dragging his body to the road and setting it afire as a crowd cheered.
The mob extinguished Armwood’s body then danced around it for some time. His body was then transported to Hayman’s Lumber Yard where authorities found it the following morning.
The Maryland State Archives reveal Armwood lived in Pocomoke City and worked as a laborer for a white employer, John H. Richardson, before his murder. It is uncertain what triggered the assault which Armwood didn’t deny. He was said to be quiet and generally well-liked although friends reckoned he was feeble-minded or mentally ill. According to the Maryland State Archives, on October 16, 1933, Denston was walking down the road near a field in Princess Anne, Maryland when Armwood allegedly assaulted her. She then filed a complaint with the police who then arrested Armwood.
The archives reveal Richardson, Armwood’s employer, may have attempted to help Armwood to flee but the latter was arrested by the police in the former’s house. While some accounts suggest Armwood raped the elderly woman, other accounts note Armwood acknowledged attacking the woman but never assaulted her sexually. Armwood for his safety was taken to the Salisbury jail, miles away from Princess Anne, to avoid mob justice as there had been a lynching two years prior to another Black man; Matthew Williams.
By 5 o’clock, a mob was forming, and Armwood was transferred to Baltimore for safe-keeping, according to the archives but the locals piled pressure on Somerset County Judge Robert F. Duer and State Attorney John Robins to return Armwood from Baltimore. Eventually, Gov. Albert Ritchie yielded. Armwood upon his return to Somerset County was placed on the second floor of the jail with other black prisoners. A crowd quickly assembled at the jail with two 15-foot timbers as battering rams and breached the jailhouse doors.
Twelve People Acquitted of Murder
Protests erupted after the lynching, urging police to arrest those responsible. Gathering evidence to file charges was not easy for police, however, since most townsfolk refused to identify the leader of the mob.
Police eventually identified nine people responsible for the lynching but a grand jury failed to indict a single person for the murder of George Armwood. Later, 12 other men were arrested and charged with the murder. Four of them were indicted and tried in court but later acquitted of all charges.
Men, Women, Children Participate in Lynching
With Armwood in their hands on October 18, 1933, an 18-year-old boy immediately cut off his ear with a butcher knife. The growing mob then beat Armwood nearly to death and dragged him to a tree, where he was hanged. Afterward, the mob cut down his corpse, dragged it through the streets, hanged it again, and then staged a public burning. The New Journal and Guide reported that “men, women, and children, participated in the savage orgy.” The Afro-Americans reported that the mob danced around Mr. Armwood’s charred remains. The report quoted one white man, who said, “It would have cost the state $1000 to hang the man. It cost us 75 cents.”
Armwood’s lynching sparked a national outcry and calls for prosecution of the culprits, yet investigations at the county, state, and federal levels faced obstacles and delays.
News outlets reported that men, women, and children all participated in the lynching and that they danced around Mr. Armwood’s charred remains as his body lay in the street.
Even when finally presented with identifying evidence, the county prosecutor refused to act. When the Maryland Attorney General ordered troops to arrest eight named participants, white residents who supported the alleged killers waged riots of protest. Four white men were ultimately tried for the lynching of Armwood and were acquitted by all-white juries.
Laws make a society thrive, it is what distinguishes humans from beasts but a community of over 2000 people chose to inflict such barbarism on an accused man. The crowd surely had men, women, and children who were religious yet could not forgive and let the law take its course. In the case of Armwood, no one was ever charged or indicted for his lynching, despite 42 witnesses testifying to seeing the act, including black prisoners who were at the Princess Anne Jail when he was dragged out.
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