The red, white and blue bunting celebrating Armistice Day covered the courthouse as the mob of hundreds of people prepared to hang the battered body of a Black teenager for everyone on the city’s main street to see.

Henry Choate was accused of attacking a 16-year-old White girl before an armed mob in Columbia, Tenn., used sledgehammers to kidnap him from jail in November 1927, according to news reports. In less than 10 minutes, the mob of an estimated 350 White men dragged the 18-year-old from the back of a car through the city and lynched him from the second story of the Maury County Courthouse over an allegation that he denied.