Willie Wong Was Killed by a Mob After His Acquittal

In August 1904, Willie Wong, a Chinese merchant in Avon, Mississippi, was killed by a Black mob after a white jury acquitted him of murdering a Black man. The Boston Globe reported that the verdict caused “great indignation among the negroes” and that a mob later “went to Wong’s house at night and killed him.” The paper added that several participants were arrested, making this one of the rare southern anti-Chinese lynchings in which newspapers also mentioned arrests. The Boston Globe framed this incident as a “new race war.” The Time Herald (D.C.) cautioned the “people who are preaching lynching down there ought to remember what an imitative cuss man is."