August 14, 2020
Known at the time as Leadbeater Corner, the intersection of King and Fairfax streets was the site of the Aug. 8, 1899 lynching of 16-year-old Benjamin Thomas.
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Blood-Stained Hands in Alexandria
City marks 1899 lynching of Benjamin Thomas, who was 16.
It happened just after midnight. On Aug. 8, 1899, 16-year-old Benjamin Thomas was attacked at the city jail on Saint Asaph Street and dragged half a mile by an angry mob of white citizens in what would become the second lynching of an African American man in two years.
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