Lynching of Austin Callaway

Austin Callaway, also known as Austin Brown (d. 9 September 1940), was a young African-American man who was taken from jail by a group of six white men and lynched on September 8, 1940, in LaGrange, Georgia. The day before, Callaway had been arrested as a suspect in an assault of a white woman. The gang carried out extrajudicial punishment and prevented the youth from ever receiving a trial. They shot him numerous times, fatally wounding him and leaving him for dead. Found by a motorist, Callaway was taken to a hospital, where he died of his wounds.

A white woman in LaGrange, Georgia, the county seat of Troup County, complained to local police that she had been assaulted by a young black man. Austin Callaway was arrested as a suspect. Sources disagree as to his age, reporting him as age 16, 18, or 24.

Callaway was held in the city jail, then located in the basement of the city hall. Early Sunday morning about 2 a.m., a gang of six white men, who may have been masked and were armed with at least one gun, broke into the jail. They ordered S.J. Willis at gunpoint, the 20-year-old jailer and sole law enforcement officer there, to open Callaway's cell. The white men forced Callaway into their vehicle, taking him outside the town. They shot him several times and left him for dead. That day Callaway was found alive, but suffering multiple gunshot wounds in his head, hands, and arms. He was taken to a hospital, where he died that day.

Although newspapers reported the police chief and county sheriff saying they were investigating the shooting, no such report has been found. Neither the county nor state police investigated the crime. The FBI did not investigate such cases at the time. The LaGrange Daily News ran one article about his death from gun wounds, referring to unknown shooters and avoiding the use of the word "lynching." But Callaway's lynching was reported as such in several major newspapers: the New York Times, Baltimore Sun, Carolina Times, Philadelphia Tribune, and Pittsburgh Courier.

Rev. Louie Strickland, pastor of Warren Temple Methodist Church, wrote to the NAACP, appealing to Thurgood Marshall, then lead attorney at the national headquarters of the NAACP, concluding, "They (white leaders) have settled the matter by ignoring it." Strickland helped charter the first branch of the NAACP in Troup County in October 1940, shortly after Callaway's lynching. The national NAACP publicized Callaway's case to support their drive for anti-lynching legislation that year, citing his death in a September 1940 letter to Senate Majority Leader Alben Barkley,(D-Kentucky), appealing for support. In LaGrange, the African-American community in LaGrange kept Callaway's story alive.

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