On a warm August night in 1911, Zachariah Walker was
lynched burned alive by an angry mob on the outskirts of Coatesville, a prosperous Pennsylvania steel town. At the time of his very public murder, Walker, an African American millworker, was under arrest for the shooting and killing of a respected local police officer. Investigated by the
NAACP, the horrific incident garnered national and international attention. Despite this scrutiny, a conspiracy of silence shrouded the events, and the accused men and boys were found not guilty at trial. On the 100th anniversary of the lynching and the 20th anniversary of the book’s original release as No Crooked Death, authors Dennis B. Downey and Raymond M. Hyser bring new insight to events that rocked a community.
Background Information
Lynching was the delivery of capital punishment by mob justice to people suspected but not convicted or perhaps even charged with crimes, primarily in the Deep South. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has been in the forefront of civil rights activity for a century.
