The book is an examination of the 1934 Jackson County lynching of Claude Neal and the related murders of 19 year old Lola Cannady and Deputy Dave Ham of the Jackson County Sheriff's Office.
A farm laborer, Neal was accused of brutally murdering Lola Cannady while she was watering hogs on her family farm between Greenwood and Malone. Taken into custody and moved for his own protection to a series of jails across the Florida Panhandle and South Alabama, he was eventually seized from the jail in Brewton, Alabama, by a group of men armed with both weapons and explosives.
Brought back to Jackson County, Neal was tortured and lynched in the deep swamps of the Chattahoochee River by a group of six men while a crowd of thousands waited at the Cannady farm hoping for a chance to witness or participate in his killing.
As these events were underway, Deputy Ham was shot and mortally wounded in a deadly escape attempt by two bank robbers. The shooting of the officer added to the general chaos.
The eight days of tragedy culminated when rioting broke out in downtown Marianna after Neal's body was found hanging from a tree at the Jackson County Courthouse. The Florida National Guard was called in to restore order.
The new book is a chronological history of the events that took place in Jackson County between October 18-28, 1934. It is the first book on this topic in thirty years and unveils a large amount of new information about those events, including new evidence in the Lola Cannady murder, new detail in the Neal lynching and the first detailed account ever written of the shooting of Deputy Ham and its role in the overall situation.
Please click here to order through Amazon.com or to read an excerpt from the book:
The Claude Neal Lynching
I will let you know as soon as the print edition is out.
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