The “Legal” Killing of Black Men is Still Racial Violence

Modern day lynchings hide behind the mask of capital punishment

Photo collage made by author on Canva of Willie B. Smith III, Dustin John Higgs, Ernest Lee Johnson, Corey Johnson, Quintin Phillippe Jones and Brandon Bernard

In 1893, Henry Smith was brutally murdered.

Smith was a Black laborer from Paris, Texas, who was accused of murdering and raping a four-year-old girl. The young white girl, Myrtle Vance, was the daughter of a local policeman who had…