Johnson’s case received wide public interest. The year before Johnson was convicted newspapers across the state were reporting that a black “crime wave” was happening. Allegedly, bbetween December 11 and 23, black suspects committed one rape, one assault and burglary, and one isolated assault. On Christmas Eve, a black gambler fatally shot a Chattanooga constable, and on Christmas Day, police received reports of eight robberies or assaults committed by black suspects. All the …show more content…
On January 23, 1906, Nevada Taylor was walking home from a streetcar stop to a cottage at the Chattanooga Forest Hills Cemetery, which was where she lived with her father who the caretaker at the cemetery. During Taylor’s attack she lost consciousness, but later identified her attacker as a black man who approached her from behind and wrapped a leather strap around her neck. She was later examined by a doctor and found to have been indeed sexually assaulted.
The police began looking for her attacker which led to Hamilton County where James Broaden, a black man fitting the description of Taylor’s attacker was arrested by Sheriff Joseph Shipp. He later arrested another black man Ed Johnson because someone witness him holding a leather strap near the streetcar stop on the night of the attack.
Not long after Johnson was arrested, word spread about the rapist being in custody. A mob of about 1500 white Chattanooga residents surrounded the prison in attempt to get Johnson and lynch him. But, the Sheriff Shipp and Judge Samuel D. McReynolds had already evacuated Johnson earlier during the day for his