The Lynching of Arthur Henry / Racial Violence in America - Florida Historical Markers on Waymarking.com

The Lynching of Arthur Henry
Shortly after midnight on Friday, November 27, 1925, three white men abducted a 35-year-old Black man named Arthur Henry from his bed at Orange General Hospital. Nearly two weeks later, Mr. Henry's lifeless body was found in the unincorporated community of Conway, shot through the heart. Hours before his abduction, Mr. Henry was admitted to the hospital with injuries after exchanging gunfire with police. Officials claimed that Mr. Henry shot at detectives as soon as they entered his home to investigate a report. In contrast, two witnesses denied that account and said the shooting happened while police had Mr. Henry in a back room. In this era, Black people were regularly presumed guilty without evidence - especially when accused of harming white police officers. Mr. Henry never had the opportunity to defend himself at trial: he was shot and beaten in his home, then arrested and confined in the hospital's "Negro Ward" with hands and feet shackled. The hospital superintendent reportedly warned police that mob violence was likely, and an officer was assigned to stand guard, but no one stopped the mob from seizing Mr. Henry from the hospital. His corpse was found 12 days later. While Mr. Henry's wife, Viola Henry, and three other Black women were arrested as "witnesses" to the original shooting, no one was arrested or held accountable for his lynching. A coroner's jury concluded Mr. Henry died at the hands of "unknown persons."

Racial Violence in America
Lynching and racial violence terrorized thousands of Black people in the United States between 1865 and 1950. After the Civil War, a persistent ideology of white supremacy led to violent abuse of Black people and decades of political, social, and economic exploitation. As white mobs were permitted to engage in brutal violence with impunity, lynching emerged the most public and notorious form of racial terrorism, intended to enforce racial hierarchy and segregation. Lynchings often included burnings and mutilation, sometimes in front of crowds numbering in the thousands. Like Arthur Henry, many Black people were taken from homes, public spaces, and courtrooms or handed over to mobs by law enforcement officials who had a legal duty to protect them. Many lynching victims' names were not recorded and will never be known, but more than 344 racial terror lynchings have been documented in Florida alone including at least 33 in Orange County.

The Wells' Built Museum was previously the location of the segregated Wells'Bui1t Hotel, established in 1926 as the area's first Black hotel by Dr. William Monroe Wells, a prominent Black doctor. Dr. Wells was the coroner who signed Arthur Henry's death certificate after his lynching in 1925. This location is also just a few blocks from Mr. Henry's home at what is now the I-4/East-West Expressway ramp, where he was shot, and the Black ward of Orange General Hospital, from which he was abducted.

Marker Number: None Date: 2023 County: Orange Marker Type: City Sponsored or placed by: Equal Justice Initiative, Orange County Community Remembrance Coalition Website: Not listed

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