Abstract

Back of the Maryland Lynching

Although white storekeepers in Princess Anne, Maryland, will tell you that the day after a convict George Armwood, accused of raping a white woman, was lynched "everything was just the same, you couldn't tell anything had happened," you meet an atmosphere of tenseness, fear, and suspicion on entering the town even now. There is restlessness in the air. The lynching has not "settled" anything. Men hang around the Street corners in groups, many of them drunk. When they see a stranger appear, they stop talking and their mouth and eyes grow hard. Someone promptly strikes up a conversation with you, to find out your business in town and to make you understand, indirectly, that this is not a healthy place to linger or to pry. There is still a feeling of uncertainty as to what may happen, a sense that the lynching was not buried with the remains of George Armwood.