thumb|alt=Article in Calhoun Times, April 27, 1899 describing the lynching of Sam Hose|Article in the Calhoun Times, April 27, 1899
Sam Hose (born Samuel Thomas Wilkes; c. 1875 – April 23, 1899) was an African American man who was tortured and murdered by a white lynch mob in Coweta County, Georgia, after being accused of rape and murder.
Personal life
Sam Hose was born Tom Wilkes in south Georgia near Marshallville (Macon County), circa 1875. He grew up on a Macon County farm owned by the Jones family; the family had owned his mother. Hose was described by those who knew him as friendly and intelligent and, unusual for a Black man in the 19th century South, he learned how to read and write. Having to look after his aging mother and an intellectually disabled brother, he abandoned his plans for higher education and worked as a manual laborer.
Accusation
Wilkes moved to Coweta County, where he assumed the alias Sam Hose. Hose had requested time off to visit his ailing mother. Hose fled the scene, and the search for him began shortly thereafter. Five cash rewards were offered for his capture, including from then-Governor Allen Candler, The Atlanta Constitution, Coweta County, the town of Palmetto, and Jacob Hass of Atlanta.
Ignoring their pleas, the crowd moved northward toward the Cranford home. The lynch mob grew, reaching an estimated 500 individuals, though some accounts purport around 2000. Once news of the capture reached Atlanta, large crowds boarded trains to Newnan. Mistakenly believing that these trains were loaded with troops, the mob stopped just north of Newnan, deciding they could wait no longer. Men and boys gathered kindling from the nearby woods to create a pyre. The skin from Hose's face was removed, and he was doused with kerosene.
The governor of Georgia, Allen D. Candler, issued a statement calling the murder of Alfred Cranford "the most diabolical in the annals of crime" and blamed the entire Black community of Georgia. Candler complained the younger generation of Black people had not been so "lucky" to have experienced slavery while the older generation of Black people had failed to pass on the right values.
Post-lynching investigation
The actions of the lynch mob were condemned throughout most of the United States and Europe.
Historian Leon Litwack states, in Trouble In Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow, that during an investigation by a white detective, separate from the investigation organized by Wells-Barnett, Cranford's wife Mattie revealed that Hose had never entered the house, and had acted in self-defense against her husband. Rusk had led an effort to commemorate the Moore's Ford lynchings by applying for a Georgia historical marker to be placed at the site of the lynching. The Georgia Historical Society erected a historical marker in 1999, the first historical marker in Georgia—and one of the first in the country—to document a lynching. Come to the Table were hoping Rusk could help them do the same at the site of Hose's lynching. To raise public interest, Rusk spoke to a journalist, Winston Skinner, from the Newnan Times-Herald. Rusk later stated the article: "I expected they would run it inside the paper on the fifth or sixth page. Instead, it was a front-page article. When I expressed my surprise, they told me anything to do with Sam Hose was a front-page story".
Rusk suggested a memorial service to honor Hose: "We hope something good will come after so many years by paying our respects to Sam Hose." One white woman wrote: "A man who is an ax murderer and a rapist, and whose crimes were described as some of the most violent, needs to be lynched. I don't care about race, sex, orientation, etc., etc. In fact, maybe if the judicial system actually punished crimes committed, there might be one person who thinks twice about crimes instead of looking forward to a cushy life in prison with three squares, cable TV, exercise equipment, libraries and steaks. Why doesn't this group not seek to honor someone who was just a good, decent person instead of someone who obviously got what he deserved?" Another letter writer wrote that while Hose did not receive fair treatment stated: "Lack of fair legal system treatment...is in no way an obligation to 'pay our respects to Sam Hose.' If we start paying respect to murderers and rapists, then we need to do the same for the late Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, and John Wayne Gacey". Rusk drove to Newnan himself to meet with members of Come to the Table, where he argued that most of the white people in Newnan knew only a very biased version about the lynching of Hose and believed that the effort to honor him was a way to defame their town's reputation."