The trail of lynch law led from the mob murder of four Negroes on a lonely Georgia roadside (TIME, Aug. 5) to a Mississippi bayou deep in the land of Bilbo. There it was marked by the battered corpse of a Negro tenant farmer floating in the scum.
The body was what remained of 35-year-old Leon McAtee who had been locked up in Holmes County jail four days before on suspicion of stealing a saddle from a white planter named Jeff Dodd. After Dodd had pleaded that he needed McAtee to help harvest his corn crop, the sheriff released him...
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