Before being finally lynched, Lige Strickland was given a chance to confess to the misdeeds of which the mob supposed him to be guilty, but he protested his innocence until the end.
Three times the noose was placed around his neck and the Negro was drawn up off the ground; three times he was let down with warnings that death was in store for him should he fail to confess his complicity in the Cranford murder, and three times Strickland proclaimed his innocence, until, weary of useless torturing, the mob pulled on the rope and tied the end around the slender trunk of the persimmon tree.
Not a shot was fired by the mob. Strickland was strangled to death. He was lynched about 2:30 a. m.
The lynching of Lige Strickland was not accomplished without a desperate effort on the part of his employer to save his life. The man who pleaded for the Negro is Major W. W. Thomas, an ex-State Senator, and one of the most distinguished citizens of Coweta County.
Sunday night, about 8:30 o’clock, about fifteen men went to the plantation of Major Thomas and took Lige Strickland from the little cabin in the woods that he called home, leaving his wife and five children to wail and weep over the fate they knew was in store for the Negro. Their cries aroused Major Thomas, and that sturdy old gentleman of the antebellum type followed the lynchers in his buggy, accompanied by his son, W. M. Thomas, determined to save, if possible, the life of his plantation darky.
He overtook the lynchers with their victim at Palmetto, and then ensued the weirdest and most dramatic scene this section has ever known, with only the moonlight to show the faces of the grim, determined men.
It had for its actors the Negro, apparently unconcerned even with the noose around his neck; the old white-haired gentlemen, pleading for the life of his servant, and attempting to prove the innocence of the Negro to men who would not be convinced.
Lige Strickland was halted directly opposite the telegraph office. The noose was adjusted around his neck and the end of the rope was thrown over a tree. Strickland was told he had a chance before dying to confess his complicity in the crime. He replied:
“I have told you all I know, gentlemen. You can kill me if you wish, but I know nothing more to tell.”
The Negro’s life might have been ended then but for the arrival of Major Thomas, who leaped from his buggy and asked for a hearing. He asked the crowd to give the Negro a chance for his life here on the streets of Palmetto, and Major Thomas said he would speak in his defense. A short conference resulted in acquiescence to this, and Major Thomas spoke in substance as follows: