The Lynching of John Carter

On May 4, 1927, Little Rock witnessed its worst episode of racial violence in the twentieth century. Thirty-eight year old John Carter was accused of attacking two white women on the outskirts of the city. A white mob hunted Carter down and hung him from a telegraph pole. Over two hundred bullets were shot into his dead body. The mob then took Carter’s body into the city, where they dragged it around the streets for several hours, gathering thousands of white residents along the way. The procession ended on West Ninth Street and Broadway where the mob tore pews from Bethel AME Church and threw Carter’s body onto their makeshift funeral pyre. The mob only dispersed when Governor John E. Martineau sent in Arkansas National Guardsmen to quell the disturbance. No charges were ever brought. I’m John Kirk, of the UALR History Department, and this has been an Arkansas moment.