Published by The Evansville Courier

A stack of smaller headlines ran down the night's events: "White Mob Makes Second Attack on County Jail - Makes Raid on Gun Stores - Negroes Shoot Son of Minister - Governor Orders Out Local Company of Militia - Murderer Brown in Jail at Vincennes - Numerous Clashes."

To avoid a lynching, law officers had secretly moved Lee Brown, a black man accused of killing a white policeman, to a Vincennes, Ind., jail. Though jailers repeatedly told the hostile crowd that Brown was not there, they continued their assault on the building.

"The attempt to lynch the Negro who murdered Officer Massey turned into a race war and wherever whites or blacks met yesterday afternoon or evening there were fights either with fists or with guns," The Courier reported.

"Negroes were chased off the streets and they in turn made attacks on various groups of white people. . . . Probably never in history was such a mob seen as that congregated around the jail."

The week's racial frenzy probably was fueled by the abundance of alcoholic beverages for Fourth of July celebrations, the thousands of additional people in the city, and the absence of a law prohibiting gunfire within city limits, historian Darrel Bigham speculated.

Opinionated newspaper reports and racist cartoons by Courier artist Irvin Alexander may have further agitated the community. Racial fighting accelerated and the mob returned to the jail to once again attempt to gain entry.

While large numbers - some from Newburgh and Kentucky - participated in the rioting at the Downtown jail, hundreds of others gathered on the crowd's fringes to watch the action.

The absence of photographs and graphic capabilities led early Courier writers to paint pictures with words. Stories ran long and the writing often was colorful. The paper described the raucous scenes and the observers who found them fascinating.

"The Fourth Street steps of the Courthouse formed an immense amphitheater upon which brightly robed women and their escorts sat and watched the work of the angry mob. . . . Little children lined the curbing around the Courthouse and joined the men in cheering whenever an iron bar would snap (on a jail window). . . . Men in all walks of life met on a common plane determined to avenge the death of Patrolman Massey."