The Lynching of George Armwood

On October 18, 1933, a mob of 2,000 or more white people from the town of Princess Anne, Maryland, beat, hanged, dragged, and burned a Black man named George Armwood, to death. The intellectually-disabled man had been accused of assaulting and raping the 71-year-old mother of a local police officer. He was 22 or 23 years old at the time.

On October 16, 71-year-old Mary Denston, the mother of a white police officer, was raped and assaulted by a Black man as she walked to her Princess Anne, Maryland, home from the post office. Denston identified her attacker as George Armwood. Police picked Armwood up at the home of his employer and transported him to the Salisbury Jail 10-miles away.

Armwood Transported Back to Princess Anne

When angry mobs gathered outside the jail, police transported Armwood to the Cecil County jail for his protection. Mobs again formed and while the sheriff quietened them down for a while, they returned again. Police moved Armwood a third time, this time to the Baltimore County Jail. A judge determined he would not be safe no matter what jail he was placed in. Police then transported him back to Princess Anne.

Later that evening, a mob of about 1,000 people gathered in front of the Princess Anne Jail housing Armwood. The sheriff pleaded with the crowds to behave civilly and fired tear gas into the crowd to attempt to quieten them. Nothing worked. Instead, they became angrier and more determined to attack George Armwood.

Mob Forces Their Way Into Jail

The angry mob soon forced their way inside the jail and headed to the special cells housing Black inmates. They found Armwood attempting to hide underneath his mattress. The mob grabbed Armwood and dragged him outside of the jail where they tied a noose around his neck.

The mob proceeded to cut off both of Armwood’s ears and ripped the gold teeth from his mouth. They beat and kicked the man, then repeatedly stabbed him before tying him to the back of a pickup truck and transporting him to a local man’s house where he was hanged from a tree.

After Armwood was dead, the mob cut him down from the tree and dragged his body back to the courthouse on Williams Street. The mob hanged his body from a telephone pole before dragging his body to the road and setting it afire as a crowd cheered.

The mob extinguished Armwood’s body then danced around it for some time. His body was then transported to Hayman’s Lumber Yard where authorities found it the following morning.

Twelve People Acquitted of Murder

Protests erupted after the lynching, urging police to arrest those responsible. Gathering evidence to file charges was not easy for police, however, since most townsfolk refused to identify the leader of the mob.

Police eventually identified nine people responsible for the lynching but a grand jury failed to indict a single person for the murder of George Armwood. Later, 12 other men were arrested and charged with the murder. Four of them were indicted and tried in court but later acquitted of all charges.

Men, Women, Children Participate in Lynching

News outlets reported that men, women, and children all participated in the lynching and that they danced around Mr. Armwood’s charred remains as his body lay in the street.

One white man who spoke to reports with The Afro American stated,

“It would have cost the state $1,000 to hang the man. It cost us 75 cents.”

"You have to know the past to understand the present."- Carl Sagan