Lamar Smith Shot Dead on Courthouse Lawn for Helping Black Voters

On August 13, 1955, Lamar Smith is shot and killed on the Lincoln County courthouse lawn in Brookhaven, Mississippi in broad daylight in front of numerous witnesses. Smith was 63 years old and had been helping Black citizens file absentee ballots to circumvent white primaries. A white man is arrested covered in blood but witnesses refuse to testify and the case is dismissed. Smith's murder occurs two weeks before Emmett Till's kidnapping, part of a summer of racial terror in Mississippi.