Lynching of Bootjack and Red

Roosevelt Townes, called Red, and Robert McDaniels, called Bootjack, were Black men accused of killing white grocer George Sam Windham near Duck Hill in December 1936. The case was thin: other Black men were held for weeks without charges, and the indictments against the two were dated back to the day of the shooting. On 13 April 1937, after a hearing in Winona, a mob of about a hundred men took them from the sheriff, who said his deputies were overpowered, and killed them near Duck Hill. No one was ever charged. Southern senators blocked an anti-lynching bill.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Winona: Fannie Lou Hamer and the Montgomery County Jail — 10 mi
  Two Freedom Trail stops in Winona for 9 June 1963, when Fannie Lou Hamer and other voting-rights workers were arrested at the bus depot and beaten in the Montgomery County Jail.
• Grenada Freedom Movement Marker — 12 mi
  The Mississippi Freedom Trail marker at Line and Green streets for the 1966 Grenada movement, when Black children entering white schools were beaten by a mob and 13 white men were arrested.
• Carroll County Courthouse — 15 mi
  The courthouse in Carrollton where, on 17 March 1886, armed white men fired into a courtroom and killed about two dozen Black people, and no one was ever charged.
• Holly Springs National Forest — 25 mi
  A patchwork national forest of about 155,000 acres in the north Mississippi hills, assembled in the 1930s from worn-out cotton fields and replanted in pine by the Civilian Conservation Corps.

More markers nearby

• Lucie E. Campbell — steps away
• 87th Infantry Division — 4.5 mi
• Camp McCain — 4.8 mi
• Magic Sam — 9.7 mi