User:EdgarJackson/The Lynching of Jesse James Payne

The Lynching of Jesse James.

In 1945, 30 year old farmhand Jesse James Payne was accused of molesting a five year old girl in Madison County, FL. While awaiting trial, he was lynched by a small mob.

Life Before Incarceration
Jesse James Payne spent much of his youth wandering around the southern United States before returning to his hometown of Greenville, FL to begin sharecropping. Jesse shared a cabin with his wife, their baby daughter, widowed mother, sister and brother-in-law on Levy Goodman's farmland. Jesse was successful when it came to farming his crop, but he had gotten himself into $30 debt with a local merchant. Levy Goodman declined to offer Jesse an advance on the next harvest. Jesse informed Levy he would be forced to take out an advanced subsidy on his tobacco crop allotment from the state. Levy feared the state would discover his excess planting including a plot for his brother-in-law Maddison County Sheriff Lonnie T. Davis. In retaliation, Goodman and his two sons forced Payne into their truck at gunpoint. They shot after Jesse James Payne as he escaped and ran off into the forest.

Goodman organized a search party by telling those involved Jesse James Payne sexually abused his five-year-old daughter. The search party quickly turned into a manhunt with the intent to lynch Jesse James Payne for his alleged crime.

Sheriff Lonnie T. Davis went to visit Jesse James Payne's mother Lucy Payne and persuade her to give up information on all Jesse's nearby relatives. After an unsuccessful search of Jesse's Uncle John "Bubba" Perry's land, Lucy and the rest of the family was threatened with beatings unless they cooperated.

The next morning Jesse James Payne showed up at Bubba's after running through the woods for two days. Bubba gave him some clothes, $5 and a watermelon from his field before sending him away. Payne was caught on July 4th, 1945 by Sherif Lonnie after receiving superficial wounds from buckshot.

Time in Jail
Jesse James Payne was delivered to the Madison County Jail at Monticello via truck bed