George White, a black man, was lynched in Wilmington, Delaware in 1903. Most people associate lynchings with south of the Mason-Dixon Line and, while this is true for the most part, black men weren’t necessarily safe in the North (the last lynching above the Mason-Dixon occurred in 1930). In 1903, George White was arrested for the stabbing of a white woman. She died while he was in custody. A mob of thousands stormed the prison while White awaited trial. They were able to fight their way past the guards and dragged the black man to a field near the scene of the crime where they burned him at the stake. President Theodore Roosevlet warned that whoever witnessed such an act, and there were young men present in the mob, would never be the same.
