The Usual Suspects: When The Badge, The Mob, And Racial Terror Occupied The Same Space

By Edmond W. Davis

Photos: Author|Wikimedia Commons

America has spent generations discussing lynching as though the rope acted alone.

It did not.

Behind America’s history of racial terror were not only Klansmen and white mobs. The historical record also contains sheriffs, deputies, police officers, state troopers, National Guard personnel, and other government officials who, in documented cases, assaulted or killed Black Americans, collaborated with white supremacists, surrendered prisoners to mobs, deputized white civilians, obstructed justice, or failed to protect people in their custody.

That does not mean every law-enforcement officer participated in racial violence, nor does this history prove law-enforcement involvement in any particular contemporary death. It establishes something narrower but historically undeniable: law enforcement cannot and will not be erased from America’s history of lynching and racial terror.

WHEN THE MOB HAD THE POWER OF THE BADGE

One of the most disturbing features of American lynching was that mob violence did not always occur in opposition to governmental authority.

Sometimes authorities tried to stop it. Sometimes they failed to stop it. But in documented cases, officers surrendered prisoners to mobs, collaborated with white supremacists, deputized civilians involved in racial violence and murder, or directly participated themselves, according to Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 34 (Tuesday, February 23, 2021), [House], [Pages H573-H583]

Those distinctions matter. A person who commits murder, someone who conspires with the killers, an official who knowingly enables a mob, and an officer who negligently fails to protect someone are not automatically guilty of the same legal offense.

But historically, none should simply disappear from the story.

BLACK WALL STREET: WHEN GOVERNMENT ENTERED THE EQUATION

The destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District—America’s most famous “Black Wall Street”—provides one of the clearest examples.

During the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, Tulsa police deputized hundreds of white residents. According to the Justice Department’s 2025 historical review, many had been drinking and agitating for the lynching of Dick Rowland immediately before receiving badges.

Law-enforcement officers then helped organize special deputies and other white Tulsans into forces that devastated Greenwood. The DOJ also found credible reports that some officers participated in murder, arson, and looting.

The DOJ characterized what happened as a coordinated attack that transcended spontaneous mob violence. Police and National Guard personnel also disarmed Black residents, confiscated weapons, and detained many survivors.

That changes the historical equation. When government officials knowingly arm, authorize, deputize, organize, assist, or empower civilians who participate in racial violence, government authority has entered the event.

The historical question, therefore, becomes larger than:

Who lit the match?

We must also ask:

Who handed out the badges? Who supplied governmental authority? Who disarmed the victims? Who detained the survivors? Who protected the community—and who failed to protect it?

THE DESTRUCTION OF BLACK COMMUNITIES

Tulsa should not be used as a template to claim that every attack on a Black community occurred in precisely the same manner. Each massacre, expulsion, lynching, and episode of racial violence requires its own evidence.

But Tulsa demonstrates why the destruction of prosperous Black communities cannot always be understood simply as “white mobs versus Black residents.”

Government action—or governmental inaction—sometimes belonged inside the equation. After Greenwood was destroyed, Tulsa officials initially promised assistance but ultimately provided little meaningful financial help and erected obstacles to reconstruction. The Justice Department concluded that officials imposed new fire codes that made rebuilding more difficult and rejected outside assistance while failing to provide adequate support themselves.

The destruction therefore did not necessarily end when the shooting and burning stopped.

Benign neglect can have consequences too.

When a government fails to protect citizens during racial violence and then places barriers before the survivors attempting to rebuild, historians must examine both the violence itself and the governmental response that followed.

SOMETIMES THE KLAN WORE A BADGE

Mug shot of Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price, 1964

Perhaps no case makes this more undeniable than the 1964 murders of civil-rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner.

Neshoba County Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price arrested the three men. They were detained for approximately six hours and released under circumstances designed so they could be intercepted. Price subsequently participated with Klansmen in the conspiracy that resulted in their murders. In that case, the officer was not simply accused of failing to prevent racial violence.

He was part of the conspiracy.

That historical fact destroys the assumption that someone wearing a badge must automatically be viewed only as the investigator rather than, when evidence warrants it, a potential subject of investigation.

Historical accuracy requires separating different kinds of conduct. A law-enforcement officer could be a direct participant, personally committing violence. An officer could be a conspirator or accomplice, knowingly helping those committing violence. Authorities could deputize or empower civilians who subsequently participated in racial violence. Officials could surrender prisoners to mobs despite having custody and a duty to protect them. Authorities could also engage in deliberate indifference, institutional obstruction, or profound neglect before, during, or after racial violence. Those categories are legally and historically different. But they all belong in an honest examination of the relationship between governmental power and racial terror.

THE HISTORICAL RECORD

The individual cases demonstrate why precision is necessary.

Elbert Williams — Tennessee, 1940: Sheriff Samuel “Tip” Hunter abducted and detained the NAACP organizer amid intimidation directed at Black voting-rights activism. Williams disappeared following his detention and was later found dead. His killer was never established.

Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner — Mississippi, 1964: Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price participated with Klansmen in the conspiracy culminating in their murders.

James Powell — New York, 1964: The 15-year-old was fatally shot by an off-duty NYPD lieutenant. Witness accounts differed, and a grand jury declined to indict the officer.

Jimmie Lee Jackson — Alabama, 1965: Alabama State Trooper James Bonard Fowler shot Jackson following a civil-rights protest. A state grand jury initially declined to indict Fowler. Forty-five years later, Fowler pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

James Earl Motley — Alabama, 1966: A sheriff’s deputy struck Motley in the head with a slapjack or similar object. Motley later died with multiple skull fractures and brain injuries. The deputy was federally prosecuted and acquitted.

Larry Payne — Tennessee, 1968: A Memphis police officer fatally shot the 16-year-old during unrest surrounding the sanitation workers’ strike. Conflicting witness accounts followed, and federal authorities ultimately declined prosecution.

These cases should not all be labeled lynchings in precisely the same legal or historical sense. Their circumstances and evidentiary records differ.

What connects them is narrower but undeniable:

Law enforcement repeatedly appears inside America’s historical record of racial violence—not merely outside it investigating afterward.

WHY CALL THEM “THE USUAL SUSPECTS”?

The title is deliberately provocative. It does not mean every police officer, sheriff’s deputy, state trooper, FBI agent, or National Guard member is guilty of lynching. It asks Americans to reconsider who historically possessed the badge, gun, jail key, arrest authority, investigative power, and governmental legitimacy when racial terror occurred. Who arrested the victim? Who controlled the jail? Who surrendered the prisoner? Who deputized the mob? Who disarmed Black residents? Who refused to intervene? Who investigated afterward? Who preserved—or failed to preserve—the evidence? Who prosecuted? And who was never held accountable?

Those questions move lynching history beyond the image of a rope hanging from a tree.

They make it a history of race, governmental power, complicity, protection, violence, investigation, and accountability.

WHAT THIS HISTORY MEANS IN 2026

This history must not be misused.

Historical evidence showing law-enforcement participation in earlier racial violence does not prove that police caused any particular contemporary hanging death. Modern deaths must stand on their own forensic and investigative evidence. Some have been ruled suicides, while other circumstances may generate questions requiring additional investigation.

But the opposite assumption is equally problematic:

No institution should automatically be placed beyond investigation merely because its members ordinarily conduct the investigation. When credible evidence raises legitimate questions involving the investigating department, independent scrutiny becomes essential.

Preserve body-camera footage. Preserve surveillance footage. Audit dispatch records. Document everyone who entered the scene. Protect physical evidence and chain of custody. Examine cellphone and location evidence. Complete toxicology and forensic pathology. Investigate potential conflicts of interest. And when credible evidence establishes a genuine conflict involving the investigating agency, bring in an outside or genuinely independent investigative authority.

HISTORY EXPLAINS THE MISTRUST

Black mistrust of American law enforcement did not materialize from nowhere. It developed against a historical record containing slave patrols, Jim Crow enforcement, jailhouse mobs, Klansmen wearing badges, police violence against civil-rights demonstrators, and killings for which accountability sometimes took decades.

That history does not establish who caused today’s deaths.

It establishes why independent scrutiny matters.

This argument is therefore not:

“The police did it.”

It is:

Investigate everyone whom credible evidence legitimately places inside the equation.

Because American history demonstrates something far more complicated than the familiar image of a nameless mob surrounding a tree, sometimes government tried to stop the mob. Sometimes government failed to stop the mob. Sometimes government empowered the mob. And in documented cases, people carrying the authority of government participated in the violence themselves. The rope did not act alone. The mob did not always act alone. And history demands that we dare to investigate the entire scene.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Edmond W. Davis is one of America’s top social historians, media strategists, and professors. Davis is the founder of the National HBCU Black Wall Street Career Fest. A native of Philadelphia, PA, he, his wife, and his son currently live in Little Rock, Arkansas. area. Davis is committed to cultural empowerment and educational equity through storytelling and civic engagement. In 2026, Davis was a grand marshal at the 38th Annual African American History Month Celebration Parade, the largest in the U.S. during Black History Month. His life is told in the 2023 ‘Short Documentary of the Year.’ at the Black Excellence Awards, titled ‘FROM GRIND TO GROWTH: The Edmond W. Davis Story. Davis was also the courthouse jailroom deputy on the NBC TV miniseries Bluff City Law.