Winner of the 1999 Missouri History Book Award 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.
Wright's death was, unfortunately, not unique in American history, but what his death meant in the larger context of life in the United States in the twentieth-cen.