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It was a Sunday in October 1939 when a young Black woman saved 21-year-old Andrew Troublefield from a 500-person lynch mob. Her age, story, and even her name are lost to us. Perhaps Black newspapers were protecting her identity. Or the information just vanished. But when she saw the mob coming, she took the risk of warning him.
Sampson County, North Carolina Sheriff C.C. Tart led the lynch mob. After the woman aided Troublefield’s escape, the mob doubled to 1,000. For days, they searched the woods. Troublefield was arrested in a neighboring county and placed on death row until his trial. And the woman? She was arrested for her bravery. But she wasn’t the first or the last.
In 2016, activist Jasmine “Abdullah” Richards became “the first African American convicted of ‘lynching’ in the United States.” Why? Because Richards tried pulling a young Black woman away from cops arresting her.
These heroines are part of the legacy of de-arrest. Black people have historically helped people escape plantation violence, freed political prisoners, resisted lynchings, and defended each other against police.
The system defines de-arrest as illegal. But let this legacy be a reminder that what’s illegal to a state that has systematically enslaved, violently policed, and inhumanely incarcerated us isn’t inherently wrong.