Mary Turner’s husband, Hayes Turner, was lynched with a dozen other Black men accused of killing an abusive white farmer on May 18, 1918. Mary Turner refused to stay silent. She was going to tell the world what they’d done to him.
And speak out she did, threatening to take legal action against her husband’s killers. The lynch mob got wind of it, and their rage intensified.
On May 19, 1918, they made a deadly example out of Mary Turner. She was hanged, set on fire, mutilated, and shot for her outspokenness. The white mob didn’t even care that she was eight months pregnant.
No charges were ever brought against the members of the mob. Mary and Hayes Turner may have been denied justice, but their deaths wouldn’t be forgotten. The horrific murder of Mary Turner pushed NAACP officials to urge Missouri Congressman Leonidas Dyer to draft the 1922 Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill.
White supremacy despises Black resistance in any form. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t resist and call out racism. Mary Turner knew the danger of speaking out, but she couldn’t ignore the injustice done against her family. Sometimes, the first step in fighting white supremacy is to speak truth to power.