Laura Nelson

Laura and L. D. Nelson were an African-American mother and son who were lynched on May 25, 1911, near Okemah, Okfuskee County, Oklahoma. They had been seized from their cells in the Okeham county jail the night before by a group of up to 40 white men, reportedly including Charley Guthrie, father of the folk singer Woody Guthrie. The Associated Press reported that Laura was raped. She and L. D. were then hung from a bridge over the North Canadian River. According to one source, Laura had a baby with her who survived the attack. Laura and L. D. were in jail because L. D. had been accused of having shot and killed Okemah's deputy sheriff, George Loney, during a search of the Nelsons' farm for a stolen cow. L. D. and Laura were both charged with murder; Laura was charged because she allegedly grabbed the gun first. Her husband, Austin, pleaded guilty to larceny and was sent to the relative safety of the state prison in McAlester, while his wife and son were held in the county jail until their trial. Sightseers gathered on the bridge on the morning of the lynching. George Henry Farnum, the owner of Okemah's only photography studio, took photographs, which were distributed as postcards, a common practice at the time. Although the district judge convened a grand jury, the killers were never identified. Four of Farnum's photographs are known to have survived—two spectator scenes and one close-up view each of L. D. and Laura. Three of the images were published in 2000 and exhibited at the Roth Horowitz Gallery in New York by James Allen, an antique collector. The images of Laura Nelson are the only known surviving photographs of a black female lynching victim.