A white mob abducted a Black woman from her home near Columbus, Mississippi, after authorities failed to find the son they had accused of burning a local man’s barn. Cordella Stevenson had already spent days in custody over the accusation before the violence reached her doorstep.
The barn belonged to a white man identified in historical accounts as Gabe Frank or G.C. Franks. After it burned in 1915, suspicion fell on Cordella and Arch Stevenson’s son despite Cordella insisting that he had left the area months earlier. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, there was no evidence tying him to the fire. Nevertheless, authorities detained his parents and questioned them about where he might be. The couple was eventually released when police concluded their son was not responsible.
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That did not end the retaliation. Reporting later examined by the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism and AFRO shows that The Chicago Defender covered the case within days, describing how suspicion had shifted toward the Stevenson family after efforts to identify the person who burned the barn failed.
A White Mob Took Cordella From Her Home
On the night of December 8, 1915, a group of white men forced their way into the Stevenson home in the New Hope area near Columbus. The mob threatened Arch with rifles before taking Cordella away. Arch managed to escape while shots were fired toward him and made his way into Columbus. Contemporary reporting said he told others what had happened before leaving for an unknown destination. What became of him afterward is unclear.
Cordella was sexually assaulted and lynched. Her unclothed body was found hanging from a tree near the Mobile and Ohio Railroad on December 9, visible to passengers traveling through the area. The Equal Justice Initiative identifies her killing as one of at least 20 documented racial-terror lynchings in Lowndes County.
Even after Cordella was found, there was no immediate removal of her body. Historical reporting states that the justice of the peace responsible for conducting the inquest was out of town, leaving her hanging until he returned. The eventual jury verdict said Cordella had died at the hands of “persons unknown.” No one was arrested or prosecuted for her murder.
More than a century later, Cordella remains among the documented victims of racial-terror lynching in Mississippi. Her name is included in the Mississippi Lynching Victims Memorial maintained by America’s Black Holocaust Museum.
Please share Cordella Stevenson’s story so that what happened to her is not erased from history. She is our sister, and her life mattered.
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