The 1906 assault of a white woman in Chattanooga led to a murder and the U.S. Supreme Court’s first and only intervention in a state criminal trial.

Sources:

Curriden, Mark and Phillips, Leroy Jr. Contempt of Court: The Turn-of-the-Century Lynching that Launched a Hundred Years of Federalism (Faber & Faber, 1999).

Hindley, Meredith. “Chattanooga versus the Supreme Court: The Strange Case of Ed Johnson.” National Endowment for the Humanities. Vol 35. No. 6. November/December 2014. https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2014/novemberdecember/feature/chattanooga-versus-the-supreme-court

Price, Eric. “Chattanooga dedicates memorial to Ed Johnson more than a century after mob-lynching.” ABC News Channel 9. 19 September, 2021. https://newschannel9.com/news/local/chattanooga-dedicates-memorial-to-ed-johnson-more-than-a-century-after-mob-lynching

Transcript of Record in U. S. Supreme Court in Case of U. S. v Shipp, Docket Original No. 5. (National Archives). 

Webb, Michael D. “‘God Bless You All-I Am Innocent’: Sheriff Joeseph F. Shipp, Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the Lynching of Ed Johnson.”Tennessee Historical Quarterly. Vol. 58. No. 2. Summer 1999. pp. 156-179

White, J. Bliss. Biography and Achievements of the Colored Citizens of Chattanooga (Chattanooga, 1904).

As well as articles from the Chattanooga Times, Chattanooga News, Voice of the People (Atlanta), and the New York Times.

Music: Credits to Holizna, Fesilyan Studios & Virginia Liston

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