Located in mid-northern Indiana is a town called Marion. Named for the Swamp Fox of Revolutionary Days; it’s just an hour and a half drive away. A place not much different from where I live. The people there seem pretty much like me.
In the summer of 1930, Claude Deeter was murdered in Marion during a robbery attempt. Three black teenagers, Thomas Shipp, Abram Smith, and James Cameron were arrested and charged. James claimed he’d had a change of heart and run away before Deeter was killed.
The suspects, quickly apprehended, were in jail. There was no reason for anyone to believe justice would not be served through due process of the Rule of Law.
How does one explain mass insanity?
Some estimated the crowd, which included women and children, to be as large as fifteen thousand in number. Fifteen from a county with a population of maybe fifty. Most of that fifteen likely thought of themselves as Christian. Yet, in whose name had they gathered; in whose justice did they trust?
Motivated by darkness, they were there to do murder. To: hang ’em on a tree!
The mob broke into the jail and extracted the three. One by one, they brutally beat and hung Shipp, then Smith. Cameron, about to die, prayed to God that his sins would be forgiven. With the rope starting to burn into his neck, James heard a voice say: he is not guilty. Suddenly, the noise, the frenzy of evil ended, and all became still; the rope removed.
In various accounts of the event, some said it was the voice of a woman, others claim it was a man; according to James, it came from above.
God Loves Danica Collins 