On May 22, 1917, a large white mob burned Ell Persons, a Black woodcutter approximately 50 years old, alive near the Macon Road bridge over the Wolf River on the outskirts of Memphis. He had been accused of the rape and decapitation of 15-year-old white schoolgirl Antoinette Rappel (also spelled Rappal or Rappel in contemporary accounts). An estimated 5,000 people—men, women, and children—watched in what newspapers described as a carnival or holiday atmosphere. Vendors sold drinks, sandwiches, and snacks; automobiles jammed the road; and spectators later took body parts as souvenirs. No one was ever charged in either Rappel’s murder or Persons’ lynching. The episode stands as one of the most public and brutal racial terror lynchings in American history and helped catalyze Black organizing in Memphis, including the founding of a local NAACP branch.
The Murder of Antoinette Rappel
On the morning of April 30, 1917, Antoinette Rappel left home on her bicycle to catch a school wagon to Treadwell School. She did not return. Early reports suggested she might have run away to join the war effort, a story her mother initially believed. On May 2, a search party found her body in the woods near Macon Road, roughly half a mile from Persons’ home. She had been sexually assaulted and decapitated with an axe. Authorities recovered a white coat, a white handkerchief, and axe marks in the ground near the scene. A police report called it “one of the most fiendish crimes that has startled the people of Shelby County in years.”
Initial investigative assessments pointed toward a white perpetrator, possibly someone the girl knew. City police reportedly leaned this way, while Shelby County Sheriff Mike Tate focused on African American woodcutters who worked in the area. Several Black men were questioned. One, Dewitt “Dummy” Ford, a deaf man, was briefly considered after a dramatic pantomime of the crime. Suspicion settled on Persons, a local woodcutter who lived nearby. He was questioned multiple times, released, then rearrested. After prolonged interrogation involving beatings and “third-degree tactics,” as the Memphis press itself reported, officers claimed he confessed. They also asserted (later disputed) that human blood was found on his shoes. In a particularly pseudoscientific turn, authorities exhumed Rappel’s body.
They claimed to see Persons’ image in her pupils—a discredited idea associated with French criminologist Alphonse Bertillon that the eyes retained the last image seen by the deceased. Eye specialists told them this was impossible; the claim nonetheless helped cement the case against Persons in the public mind. A grand jury indicted Persons. Fearing mob violence, authorities transported him to the Tennessee State Prison in Nashville for safekeeping. Angry crowds met the train at stops along the route.
Capture by the Mob
As the trial date approached (scheduled for around May 25), groups of white men calling themselves “the Avengers” monitored rail lines into Memphis. On May 21, 1917, two deputies escorting Persons back from Nashville for arraignment were overpowered near Potts Camp, Mississippi. The mob seized him from the passenger car. Newspapers openly anticipated the capture and the coming lynching. The Commercial Appeal headline the next morning read: “Mob Captures Slayer of the Rappel Girl: Ell Persons to Be Lynched Near Scene of Murder; May Resort to Burning.” It even gave the approximate time and place. There is no evidence that authorities made serious efforts to recover Persons or prevent what followed.
The Lynching
On the morning of May 22, thousands gathered near the west end of the Macon Road bridge over the Wolf River (near present-day Summer Avenue). Estimates of the crowd ranged from 5,000 to as high as 10,000–15,000. The scene resembled a public festival: parents brought children (some schools closed early or recorded high absences), women dressed up, and vendors did brisk business. Persons was brought to the site of Rappel’s murder. Rappel’s mother, Minnie Wood (or Woods), addressed the crowd, expressing a desire that he suffer far more than her daughter had and urging that he be burned.
Accounts vary slightly in sequence, but the core facts are consistent. Persons was forced to “confess” again. He was initially suspended or positioned near a pit of gasoline-soaked wood, then chained to a large log. Large quantities of gasoline were poured over him and the wood. A match was applied. He reportedly made little sound beyond a faint cry. Spectators watched as he burned. Afterward, the crowd mutilated the body: ears, nose, lips, fingers, and other parts were cut off; some accounts describe further acts including the removal of the heart. Persons was decapitated in a manner echoing the treatment of Rappel’s body. Pieces of the charred remains, clothing, and rope were taken as souvenirs. Photographs of the severed head were later sold as postcards.
That same day, members of the mob drove into Memphis and threw Persons’ head (and in some reports a foot) onto Beale Street, the heart of the city’s African American commercial and cultural district, as a deliberate act of intimidation directed at Black residents. Blues musician W.C. Handy later recalled the demoralizing sight of the remains and the profound impact it had on the community.
Aftermath and Investigations
No members of the mob were identified or prosecuted. An investigating jury produced no charges. Local white newspapers described the event in celebratory or matter-of-fact terms; one editorial called the lynching “orderly.” Some white clergy, including Rabbi William Fineshriber of Temple Israel, publicly condemned it. James Weldon Johnson, then field secretary of the NAACP, traveled to Memphis to investigate. After speaking with officials, journalists, white and Black residents, and reviewing coverage, he concluded there was “no positive evidence” of Persons’ guilt. Standing at the still-charred site, Johnson later reflected in his autobiography Along This Way: “I tried to balance the sufferings of the miserable victim against the moral degradation of Memphis, and the truth flashed over me that in large measure the race question involves the saving of black America’s body and white America’s soul.” His findings were published as a supplement to The Crisis. Local Black spokesman Charles W. Cansler and others reached similar conclusions about the lack of solid evidence.
The lynching accelerated Black political organizing. Robert R. Church Jr., Bert M. Roddy, and other Black businessmen and professionals established the Memphis branch of the NAACP in June 1917—one of the earliest in the South. Membership grew rapidly; by 1919 it was among the largest southern branches. Church’s Lincoln League also saw increased activity. Hundreds of Black Memphians left the city in the immediate aftermath, contributing to the Great Migration. The event contributed to national protest, including the Silent Protest Parade of roughly 10,000 African Americans in New York City in July 1917 against lynching and racial violence.
Historical Context and Legacy
Memphis in 1917 was a growing city with a significant Black population, a vibrant Beale Street district, and residual Black political influence through figures like Church. At the same time, it retained deep patterns of racial hierarchy, rural southern attitudes toward “justice,” and a history of racial violence stretching back to the 1866 Memphis Massacre. Public spectacle lynchings were less common in the urban core than in surrounding areas, making the open, advertised, daytime nature of Persons’ killing especially stark. It was the last major public lynching of this type in Shelby County.
Historians note the role of media sensationalism, the presumption of Black guilt in cases involving white victims (especially women and girls), the willingness of officials to bend to mob pressure, and the use of the event to reinforce racial control amid Black political and economic gains. The coerced confession, reliance on discredited forensic ideas, and disagreement among law enforcement about the true perpetrator underscore the absence of due process.
In 2017, on the centennial, historical markers were dedicated near the site through efforts by students (Students Uniting Memphis / Facing History and Ourselves at Overton High School), the Shelby County Historical Commission, the Memphis NAACP, the National Park Service, and the Lynching Sites Project of Memphis. Relatives of both Persons and Rappel participated in commemorations. The undeveloped wooded site (near the 5400 block of Summer Avenue, with remnants of the old bridge abutments) was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on August 7, 2024 (reference 100009136), recognized for its association with racial terror lynching and African American history and civil rights. It is among the first such lynching sites so designated.
The lynching of Ell Persons remains a stark illustration of the machinery of racial terror in the Jim Crow South: the swift collapse of legal process, the public ritual of violence as community spectacle and warning, the complicity or inaction of authorities, and the long shadow it cast on a city’s Black community—while also galvanizing organized resistance that outlasted the immediate horror.