Lynching of Jim McIlherron
1918 lynching in Tennessee, United States
Jim McIlherron was an African-American man who was tortured and executed by a lynch mob on February 12, 1918, in Estill Springs, Tennessee. McIlherron was lynched in retaliation for shooting and killing two white men after a fight broke out.
Walter White wrote a report on the lynching for the May 1918 issue of the NAACP magazine The Crisis.
It was also covered by the York Daily Record and The New York Times in February 1918.
Personal life
Jim McIlherron lived with his parents and several brothers. The father, who owned his own land during a time of "separate, but equal" in America, was despised for being wealthy "for a negro".p. 17
Relationship with the community
After the Civil War, of which Tennessee was a Confederate state, Tennessee enacted Jim Crow laws and held a separate, but equal mentality.
The McIlherron family aggravated the local white community, as they had a reputation for not backing down to insults from whites. The family had become a bit more wealthy than their white neighbors. The people in the Estill Springs area were generally the poorer white folk,p.
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