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- Text is exactly "On March 3, 1899, John Bigley, Tip Hudson, Ed Wynn (who is likely the same person identified in the Tuskegee University Archive as Edward Brown), Bud Cotton, and Henry Bingham were lynched after being accused of burning two business blocks in Palmetto, Georgia in February 1899. Although there was no evidence tying the suspects to the burning, more than 100 men formed a mob to remove security from the warehouse they were kept in as a makeshift jail.
With guns raised and aggression leading the masked men came into the warehouse threatening the lives of the six guards if they didn’t turn over the imprisoned men immediately. One recollection says they came in yelling “Hands up and don’t move; if you move a foot or turn your hands I will blow your damned brains out.” The threat succeeded and the guards surrendered. The mob then tied up the men accused of burning the businesses and shot them. In addition to the men who were lynched mentioned above, John Jameson and George Tatum were injured, according to Atlanta Journal correspondent Royal Daniel (whose article is replicated in Lynch Law in Georgia). Daniel also reported that Ison Brown and Clem Watts escaped the mob without injury. None of the men in the mob were identified or held accountable for the murder of Henry Bingham or the others.
According to the Atlanta Journal article, Bud Cotton’s confession implicated the others for their involvement in the burning of the businesses. Where there is not proof for or against their guilt in the burning, there is a moral argument that whether innocent or guilty, Bingham, Bigley, Hudson, Brown, and Cotton deserved a fair trial and were unjustly killed like far too many others in their same county during another dark, forgotten story of America’s real narrative. "
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