White caps were groups involved in the whitecapping movement who were operating in southern Indiana in the late 19th century. They engaged in vigilante justice and lynchings, with modern viewpoints describing their actions as domestic terrorism. They became common in the state following the American Civil War and lasted until the turn of the 20th century. White caps were especially active in Crawford and neighboring counties in the late 1880s. Several members of the Reno Gang were lynched in 1868, causing an international incident. Some of the members had been extradited to the United States from Canada and were supposed to be under federal protection. Lynchings continued against other criminals, but when two possibly innocent men were killed in Corydon in 1889,[1] Indiana responded by cracking down on the white cap vigilante groups, beginning in the administration of Isaac P. Gray.
Governor of Indiana James A. Mount belonged to one of the white cap groups, and reversed state policy of trying to stop the groups. His successor, Winfield T. Durbin, resumed the policy in 1900, two years after the Indiana General Assembly passed a strong anti-lynching law. When a lynching occurred in Vincennes in 1902 Durbin removed several law enforcement personnel from their positions, to show that he expected locals to cooperate in stopping the lynching. His plan worked, and when a lynching was threatened in the following year local police notified Durbin who called out the state militia to guard the jailhouse. When the white cap groups attacked the jailhouse, the militia opened fire; killing one and wounding at least eleven.
The show of force effectively brought an end to vigilante lynching in Indiana. Only two recorded lynchings have occurred since then, the 1930 murders of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith. Lynching in Indiana was not explicitly racial, but tended to occur against anyone suspected of murder. Between 1860 and 1910, at least 68 people were lynched; twenty were blacks and forty-eight were whites.[citation needed]
^Strung to the Bridge, Corydon's Murderers Lynched (19 June 1889). "Indiana State Sentinel 19 June 1889 — Hoosier State Chronicles: Indiana's Digital Historic Newspaper Program". Indiana State Sentinel. Retrieved 17 April 2016.
and 25 Related for: Indiana White Caps information
Whitecaps were groups involved in the whitecapping movement who were operating in southern Indiana in the late 19th century. They engaged in vigilante...
a ski resort in Anderson, Wisconsin, U.S. WhiteCap Peak, Custer County, Idaho, U.S. IndianaWhiteCaps, a late-19th-century American vigilante organization...
The Michigan City WhiteCaps were a minor league baseball team based in Michigan City, Indiana from 1956 to 1959. The WhiteCaps were a member of the Class...
independent from the state. These groups became known as the "WhiteCaps". The first WhiteCap operations generally aimed at those who went against a community's...
The WhiteCaps is a 1905 American silent drama film, directed by Wallace McCutcheon and Edwin S. Porter showing how a man abusing his wife is punished...
towns, also known as sunset towns, gray towns, or sundowner towns, are all-white municipalities or neighborhoods in the United States and Canada that were...
his criminality. The top of Parrott's skull was crudely sawn off, and the cap was presented to 16-year-old Lillian Heath, then a medical assistant to Maghee...
time by all Hoosiers. Indiana portal 1920s portal History of Indiana History of the Ku Klux Klan in New Jersey IndianaWhiteCaps Ku Klux Klan Ku Klux...
Burrage's farm. During the investigation it emerged that members of the local White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Neshoba County Sheriff's Office, and the...
photograph of the 1930 lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana. Meeropol published the poem under the title "Bitter Fruit" in January...
Price (April 15, 1938 – May 6, 2001) was an American police officer and white supremacist. He was a participant in the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and...
received a tip. During the investigation it emerged that members of the local White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Neshoba County Sheriff's Office, and the...
before an all-white jury, convicted seven conspirators, including the deputy sheriff, and acquitted eight others. It was the first time a white jury convicted...
segregated high school, because the principal feared the reaction of the all-white school board. After high school, Chaney started as a plasterer's apprentice...
lynchings, segregation, legalized racial discrimination, and expressions of white supremacy all increased. Asian Americans were also not spared from such...
in a series of lynchings in May 1918 in southern Georgia, United States. White people killed at least 13 black people during the next two weeks. Among...
massacre, was a two-day-long white supremacist terrorist massacre that took place between May 31 and June 1, 1921, when mobs of white residents, some of whom...
and lynched in Mississippi in 1955 after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family's grocery store. The brutality of his...
Washington was convicted of raping and murdering Lucy Fryer, the wife of his white employer in rural Robinson, Texas. He was chained by his neck and dragged...
Catholics. In Indiana, members were American-born, white Protestants and covered a wide range of incomes and social levels. The Indiana Klan was perhaps...
might have gone too far, but they are white men and Crawford was black. The black must submit to the white or the white will destroy. There were several hundred...
troops from South Carolina and Louisiana. As soon as the troops left, many white Republicans also left, and the "Redeemer" Democrats, who already dominated...
On January 14, 1889, a white woman reported that she had been raped and her son killed by an African American man. Over 400 white coal miners formed themselves...
his co-workers at the Van Priest Dime Store, including Cynthia Goff, a white girl, followed by a letter to her on New Year's Day. The New Year's Day...
weekly banquets and helped newcomers find jobs. He began attracting many white followers as well as black. The integrated environment of Father Divine's...
Global Information