The lynching of Cleo Wright

by Dominic J. Capeci

On January 20, 1942, black oil mill worker Cleo Wright assaulted a white woman in her home and nearly killed the first police officer who tried to arrest him. An angry mob then hauled Wright out of jail and dragged him through the streets of Sikeston, Missouri, before burning him alive. In The Lynching of Cleo Wright, Capeci draws from a wide range of archival sources and personal interviews with participants and spectators to draw vivid portraits of Wright, his victims, law-enforcement officials, and members of the lynch mob. Capeci places Wright in the larger context of southern racial violence and shows the significance of his death in local, state, and national history during the most important crisis of the twentieth century.