The wikipedia article about lynching
In August 1930, when Cameron was 16 years old, he and two older teenage friends, Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith, were charged in Marion with the murder of a young white man, Claude Deeter, during an armed robbery attempt, and with the rape of his girlfriend. (The latter charge was dropped.) Cameron said he ran away before the man was killed.[1][2] The three were caught quickly and arrested and charged the same night with robbery, murder and rape.
A lynch mob broke into the jail where Cameron and his two friends were being held. According to Cameron's own account, the two older boys were taken out first, beaten and lynched by a mob of 12,000-15,000 at the Grant County Courthouse Square. Shipp was taken out and beaten, hanged from the bars of his jail window; Smith was dead from beating before the mob hanged both the boys from a tree in the square.[1][2] Cameron was beaten and a noose was put around his neck; before he was hanged, the voice of an unidentified woman intervened, saying that he was not guilty. He was returned to the jail. Cameron said his neck was scarred from the rope.
Mrs. Flossie Bailey, a local NAACP official, and the State Attorney General worked to gain indictments against leaders of the mob in the lynchings, but were unsuccessful. No one was ever charged in the murders of Shipp and Smith, nor the assault on Cameron.[3]
Cameron was convicted at trial in 1931 as an accessory before the fact to the murder of Deeter, and served four years of his sentence in a state prison. After he was paroled, Cameron moved toDetroit, Michigan, where he worked at Stroh Brewery Company and attended Wayne State University.[4]
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