Frustrated Lynch Mob

The determined men of a Shelbyville, Tennessee, mob were cheated of a lynching when National Guardsmen stoutly resisted their attempts to lay hands on an African American charged with the assault of a 14-year-old white girl. In the center, wearing a long overcoat, is G.L. Gibson, father of the assault victim. The mustached-man beside him, also brandishing a revolver, is his brother, the girl's uncle. Infuriated at the escape from punishment of E.K. Harris, the suspect, who was spirited away from town by troops during the height if the trouble, and by the death of two men and the wounding of many others during the melee with the troops, the mob set fire to the Shelbyville Courthouse.