ExploreSouthernHistory.com - The Claude Neal Lynching, Florida
ExploreSouthernHistory.com - The Claude Neal Lynching, Florida
| Courthouse Square in Marianna Claude Neal's body was found hanging from a tree outside the old courthouse, which no longer stands. |
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Murder Scene in 1934
Lola Cannady's mother looks
down at her daughter's body
in this moving crime scene
photo taken in 1934.
Lola Cannady's mother looks
down at her daughter's body
in this moving crime scene
photo taken in 1934.
Murder Scene in 2011
The hog pen where Lola
Cannady was allegedly
attacked by Claude Neal was
near the trees in the distance.
The hog pen where Lola
Cannady was allegedly
attacked by Claude Neal was
near the trees in the distance.
Marianna, Florida
The lynching of Claude Neal
ignited a riot in Marianna.
Mobs crowded the downtown
until National Guard troops
arrived.
The lynching of Claude Neal
ignited a riot in Marianna.
Mobs crowded the downtown
until National Guard troops
arrived.
The Claude Neal Lynching - Marianna & Jackson County, Florida
Shadows of the Past in Florida
| Copyright 2011 by Dale Cox All rights reserved. |
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The Cannady Family
Lola Cannady's mother,
younger brother and father
stand before their house in
this 1934 photograph.
Lola Cannady's mother,
younger brother and father
stand before their house in
this 1934 photograph.
In 2011, as part of a renewed focus on 100
unsolved crimes of the Civil Rights era, the
U.S. Department of Justice opened a new
investigation into the 1934 Florida lynching of
an African American farm worker named
Claude Neal.
The lynching took place near the city of
Marianna in the Florida Panhandle and was
one of the pivotal events of the Great
Depression. FBI agents have been in the
area looking into the crime, reverberations of
which continue to be felt despite the passage
of 77 years since the violent events of
October 1934.
The outbreak in Marianna and Jackson
County began on October 18, 1934. A 19 year
old woman named Lola Cannady left her
home near the farm town of Greenwood to
water her family's hogs, which were kept in a
pen a few hundred yards from the house.
She never came back.
A search began and signs of foul play were
found. Scuff marks and footprints near the
water pump showed signs of a fierce fight.
There was blood on the ground and a man's
footprints were found leading from the hog
pen to the nearby home of a woman named
Sallie Smith. Those prints were followed and
Smith and her niece, Annie Smith, were
found trying to wash blood from a man's
clothes.
The only man living in the house at the time
was Claude Neal. Twenty-three years old, he
was the son of Annie Smith and the great-
nephew of Sallie Smith. He did not come
home that night.
The body of Lola Cannady was found the next
morning (October 19, 1934). She had been
beaten to death with a hammer and her body
dumped in a wooded area. Near her body
were found a piece of blood-stained cloth
and the stem and loop of a pocket watch.
Claude Neal was immediately arrested on
suspicion of murder by a county sheriff's
deputy. The piece of cloth found near Lola's
body turned out to be from one of his shirt
sleeves. His pocket watch was found to be
missing its stem and loop. The broken ones
found at the murder scene were a perfect
match for his watch.
As word of the brutal nature of the murder
spread through the cotton and peanut farms
of northeastern Jackson County, anger
surged among the people of the area. Cars
and mule-drawn wagons flooded to the
Cannady farm and as hundreds of people
gathered there, lynching Claude Neal was
freely discussed.
Lynching was still common in the United
States during the early 1930s and while it
was most prevalent in the South, such
incidents also took place in the Midwest,
Northeast and West.
Jackson County Sheriff W.F. "Flake"
Chambliss tried desperately to keep Neal
safe, sending him out of Jackson County to a
series of other jails. The suspect was held
briefly at county jails in Chipley, Panama City
and Pensacola, Florida, before being hidden
away at the jail in Brewton, Alabama.
Neal's mother and great-aunt, Annie and
Sallie Smith, were also taken into custody
and moved first to Chipley and from there to
Pensacola. At the former jail they told Sheriff
Chambliss that they had seen Claude with
Lola Cannady and then heard her scream.
They also confirmed that the bloody clothes
found at their home were his.
On October 22, 1934, Claude Neal admitted
to raping and murdering Lola Cannady, but
said the crime had been instigated by a man
named Herbert Smith. Sheriff's officers in
Jackson County questioned this, but arrested
Smith and arranged for him to confront Neal
at the jail in Brewton.
Smith, who was also a black farm worker,
confronted Neal at the Brewton jail on
October 24th. Neal now admitted to officers
that he had committed the crime alone and
that Smith had nothing to do with it.
By the next day a reporter in Mobile, Alabama,
had learned of Neal's confession. Despite a
denial from Sheriff G.R. Byrne that Claude
Neal was still in his jail, the report went out
through newspapers and on radio stations
that he was there and had confessed.
unsolved crimes of the Civil Rights era, the
U.S. Department of Justice opened a new
investigation into the 1934 Florida lynching of
an African American farm worker named
Claude Neal.
The lynching took place near the city of
Marianna in the Florida Panhandle and was
one of the pivotal events of the Great
Depression. FBI agents have been in the
area looking into the crime, reverberations of
which continue to be felt despite the passage
of 77 years since the violent events of
October 1934.
The outbreak in Marianna and Jackson
County began on October 18, 1934. A 19 year
old woman named Lola Cannady left her
home near the farm town of Greenwood to
water her family's hogs, which were kept in a
pen a few hundred yards from the house.
She never came back.
A search began and signs of foul play were
found. Scuff marks and footprints near the
water pump showed signs of a fierce fight.
There was blood on the ground and a man's
footprints were found leading from the hog
pen to the nearby home of a woman named
Sallie Smith. Those prints were followed and
Smith and her niece, Annie Smith, were
found trying to wash blood from a man's
clothes.
The only man living in the house at the time
was Claude Neal. Twenty-three years old, he
was the son of Annie Smith and the great-
nephew of Sallie Smith. He did not come
home that night.
The body of Lola Cannady was found the next
morning (October 19, 1934). She had been
beaten to death with a hammer and her body
dumped in a wooded area. Near her body
were found a piece of blood-stained cloth
and the stem and loop of a pocket watch.
Claude Neal was immediately arrested on
suspicion of murder by a county sheriff's
deputy. The piece of cloth found near Lola's
body turned out to be from one of his shirt
sleeves. His pocket watch was found to be
missing its stem and loop. The broken ones
found at the murder scene were a perfect
match for his watch.
As word of the brutal nature of the murder
spread through the cotton and peanut farms
of northeastern Jackson County, anger
surged among the people of the area. Cars
and mule-drawn wagons flooded to the
Cannady farm and as hundreds of people
gathered there, lynching Claude Neal was
freely discussed.
Lynching was still common in the United
States during the early 1930s and while it
was most prevalent in the South, such
incidents also took place in the Midwest,
Northeast and West.
Jackson County Sheriff W.F. "Flake"
Chambliss tried desperately to keep Neal
safe, sending him out of Jackson County to a
series of other jails. The suspect was held
briefly at county jails in Chipley, Panama City
and Pensacola, Florida, before being hidden
away at the jail in Brewton, Alabama.
Neal's mother and great-aunt, Annie and
Sallie Smith, were also taken into custody
and moved first to Chipley and from there to
Pensacola. At the former jail they told Sheriff
Chambliss that they had seen Claude with
Lola Cannady and then heard her scream.
They also confirmed that the bloody clothes
found at their home were his.
On October 22, 1934, Claude Neal admitted
to raping and murdering Lola Cannady, but
said the crime had been instigated by a man
named Herbert Smith. Sheriff's officers in
Jackson County questioned this, but arrested
Smith and arranged for him to confront Neal
at the jail in Brewton.
Smith, who was also a black farm worker,
confronted Neal at the Brewton jail on
October 24th. Neal now admitted to officers
that he had committed the crime alone and
that Smith had nothing to do with it.
By the next day a reporter in Mobile, Alabama,
had learned of Neal's confession. Despite a
denial from Sheriff G.R. Byrne that Claude
Neal was still in his jail, the report went out
through newspapers and on radio stations
that he was there and had confessed.
That night a group of men armed with pistols
and dynamite decoyed Sheriff Byrne out of
position and then raided the Brewton jail.
Neal was taken away by them.
The next day, October 26th, thousands of
people gathered at the Cannady farm in
Jackosn County, believing they would be
allowed to witness the lynching of Claude
Neal. The men holding him, however,
tortured and then killed Neal at a remote
riverboat landing near the Chattahoochee
River community of Parramore in eastern
Jackson County.
Neal's mutilated body was taken first to the
Cannady farm where Lola's father and other
relatives fired additional bullets into it. A short
time later it was taken to the Jackson County
Courthouse in Marianna where it was
hanged from a tree outside the sheriff's office.
Sheriff Chambliss found it there at 6 a.m. the
next morning and cut it down. Although
Neal's body was buried by 10 a.m., the crowd
in Marianna continued to grow and at 12
noon a riot erupted. Two companies of
National Guard troops were sent in to quell
the violence and Marianna eventually quieted
down. No additional deaths were reported.
The NAACP and other organizations used the
Claude Neal lynching as the major example
in their drive for a national anti-lynching law.
The effort failed in the U.S. Senate, but the
publicity generated by Neal's death all but
ended public spectacles surrounding
lynchings in America.
Neal's death was not actually a public
spectacle lynching as he was killed by six
men deep in the woods, so despite the
claims of many modern writers it was not the
last such event in U.S. history. Many of the
events surrounding the lynching, though,
definitely took on a spectacle atmosphere.
No one was ever arrested in connection with
the crime.
As of late October, the results of the new FBI
investigation into the Neal lynching are not
known. In the 77 years that have passed
since the crime, no one has ever been
arrested for killing Claude Neal. All six of the
original lynchers are now dead.
Writer and historian Dale Cox has completed
a new book on the incident. The Claude Neal
Lynching: The 1934 Murders of Claude Neal
and Lola Cannady is now available for order
through Amazon.com and will be available
soon through other online booksellers.
The book features never before published
details about the murder of Lola Cannady
and lynching of Claude Neal, including crime
scene photos and the first interviews ever
released with the men who took Neal from
the Brewton jail and then killed him in the
woods of Jackson County, Florida.
The Claude Neal Lynching can be ordered in
both book and Kindle formats at the upper
right of this page.
and dynamite decoyed Sheriff Byrne out of
position and then raided the Brewton jail.
Neal was taken away by them.
The next day, October 26th, thousands of
people gathered at the Cannady farm in
Jackosn County, believing they would be
allowed to witness the lynching of Claude
Neal. The men holding him, however,
tortured and then killed Neal at a remote
riverboat landing near the Chattahoochee
River community of Parramore in eastern
Jackson County.
Neal's mutilated body was taken first to the
Cannady farm where Lola's father and other
relatives fired additional bullets into it. A short
time later it was taken to the Jackson County
Courthouse in Marianna where it was
hanged from a tree outside the sheriff's office.
Sheriff Chambliss found it there at 6 a.m. the
next morning and cut it down. Although
Neal's body was buried by 10 a.m., the crowd
in Marianna continued to grow and at 12
noon a riot erupted. Two companies of
National Guard troops were sent in to quell
the violence and Marianna eventually quieted
down. No additional deaths were reported.
The NAACP and other organizations used the
Claude Neal lynching as the major example
in their drive for a national anti-lynching law.
The effort failed in the U.S. Senate, but the
publicity generated by Neal's death all but
ended public spectacles surrounding
lynchings in America.
Neal's death was not actually a public
spectacle lynching as he was killed by six
men deep in the woods, so despite the
claims of many modern writers it was not the
last such event in U.S. history. Many of the
events surrounding the lynching, though,
definitely took on a spectacle atmosphere.
No one was ever arrested in connection with
the crime.
As of late October, the results of the new FBI
investigation into the Neal lynching are not
known. In the 77 years that have passed
since the crime, no one has ever been
arrested for killing Claude Neal. All six of the
original lynchers are now dead.
Writer and historian Dale Cox has completed
a new book on the incident. The Claude Neal
Lynching: The 1934 Murders of Claude Neal
and Lola Cannady is now available for order
through Amazon.com and will be available
soon through other online booksellers.
The book features never before published
details about the murder of Lola Cannady
and lynching of Claude Neal, including crime
scene photos and the first interviews ever
released with the men who took Neal from
the Brewton jail and then killed him in the
woods of Jackson County, Florida.
The Claude Neal Lynching can be ordered in
both book and Kindle formats at the upper
right of this page.
Cannady House in the 1980s
Former Jackson County
Sheriff John P. McDaniel talks
with an eyewitness in front of
the Cannady house during
the late 1980s. The house no
longer stands.
Former Jackson County
Sheriff John P. McDaniel talks
with an eyewitness in front of
the Cannady house during
the late 1980s. The house no
longer stands.
Claude Neal Lynching
Edited photo of Claude Neal's
body hanging from a tree at
the courthouse in Marianna.
The city has changed
dramatically over the nearly
80 years that have passed
since this picture was taken.
Edited photo of Claude Neal's
body hanging from a tree at
the courthouse in Marianna.
The city has changed
dramatically over the nearly
80 years that have passed
since this picture was taken.
Video on the Claude Neal Lynching
Kindle $6.95
Book $19.95