October 1904 – Clarksdale, Mississippi: African Americans Lynch Willie Wong, Accused and Acquited of Murdering a Black Man

[AI-generated placeholder. Deeper narrative coming soon.] In Clarksdale, Mississippi, in 1904, a rare instance of Black-on-Chinese mob violence was recorded. Willie Wong, a Chinese merchant, had been acquitted by a white jury for the shooting death of a Black man – a verdict that caused “great indignation among the negroes.” A mob of African Americans later “went to Wong’s house at night and killed him” in retaliation (Boston Globe, Aug. 6, 1904). Several participants were arrested by the sheriff afterward. This lynching, driven by the Black community’s anger over perceived injustice, highlighted the complex racial tensions in the Jim Crow South, where Chinese immigrants occupied an ambiguous social position between Black and white.