The 1916 Newberry Lynchings and the Reckoning with Florida’s Darkest Day
On the warm, humid night of August 18, 1916, in the rural hamlet of Jonesville, just west of Gainesville, a dispute over livestock ignited one of the most brutal episodes of racial violence in Florida’s history. Before the weekend was over, a white mob would conduct a campaign of terror that left six documented African Americans dead, an entire community traumatized into silence, and a bloody stain on Alachua County that would take a century to confront publicly.
The events began in the pre-dawn hours of August 19. Constable S. G. Wynne, accompanied by Dr. L. G. Harris and G. H. Blount, rode out to the home of Boisey Long, a Black farmer in Jonesville. The lawmen intended to arrest or question Long regarding an alleged hog theft, a minor offense that in the Jim Crow era was routinely used to target and harass Black landowners and laborers.
Accounts of what transpired inside the cabin conflict sharply. Contemporary white press claimed that Long opened fire without warning when officers knocked on his door. Oral histories and later historical research suggest that the officers forced their way in with guns drawn and that Constable Wynne fired first, prompting Long to return fire in self-defense.
When the smoke cleared, Dr. Harris was wounded, Constable Wynne was mortally shot, and Long had fled into the surrounding woods. Wynne was rushed to a hospital in Jacksonville but died en route.
The death of a white lawman transformed a local law enforcement action into a deadly racial manhunt. Within hours, an armed white posse numbering between 200 and 300 men mobilized from across Alachua and Levy counties. Unable to immediately find Boisey Long, the mob turned its fury toward Long's family, friends, and neighbors, accusing them of aiding his escape.
James Dennis was hunted down in the woods near Jonesville during the search and shot to death on the spot. Five others were rounded up and locked inside the small frame Newberry jail: Gilbert Dennis, Mary Dennis, Stella Young, Andrew McHenry, and the Reverend Joshua Baskin. Mary Dennis was pregnant with twins at the time. None of the five held in the jail were ever charged with a crime, granted legal counsel, or brought before a judge.
In the early morning hours of August 19, 1916, the mob dragged the five prisoners out of the Newberry jail. They were taken to a clearing outside of town known as the local picnic grounds, a grove of live oaks later remembered grimly as Lynch Hammock or Hangman’s Island.
There, the mob hanged all five victims from a massive oak tree. When morning broke, the bodies were deliberately left hanging in public view as a spectacle of terror. White residents from surrounding towns drove out to view the scene, while local Black families hid in their homes, terrified that the mob would turn on them next.
While history officially documents these six victims, known collectively as the Newberry Six, local oral histories preserved by Black families suggest that additional unnamed Black residents were shot or killed in the surrounding woods during the chaos.
Boisey Long was eventually captured days later on August 23 near Chiefland. Brought back under heavy guard, he was given a brief trial in Gainesville by an all-white jury, convicted, and executed in the state electric chair in 1917.
In the wake of the massacre, an overwhelming conspiracy of silence settled over Alachua County. White perpetrators enforced an oath among themselves to never speak publicly of the killings to law enforcement or reporters, ensuring no member of the mob was ever indicted or prosecuted.
For Black families, speaking about the incident posed an existential threat to their lives and livelihoods. For nearly a century, the Newberry Lynchings were relegated to hushed whispers, private family grief, and deliberate omission from official town histories.
The wall of silence began to break through the dedicated work of community historians, descendants, and scholars, most notably the late Dr. Patricia Hilliard-Nunn, a professor and filmmaker at the University of Florida. By collecting oral histories from descendants, Dr. Hilliard-Nunn helped piece together the names, human stories, and dignity of the victims.
In recent years, the community of Newberry and Alachua County has taken active steps to confront this chapter of its past. In 2018, a state historical marker was placed near the cemetery at Pleasant Plain United Methodist Church in Jonesville, where several of the victims are buried in historically unmarked or restored graves.
In 2021, partnering with the Equal Justice Initiative and the Alachua County Community Remembrance Project, soil was gathered from Lynch Hammock to be displayed at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, and a second marker was dedicated near the site of the hanging.
The history of Florida is often told through its conquests, boomtowns, coastlines, and space missions, but an honest account of the state must also hold space for August 19, 1916. The Newberry Six were not casualties of a random event; they were victims of a system of racial terror designed to deny basic human rights and legal protections to Black Floridians.
By naming Gilbert Dennis, Mary Dennis, Stella Young, Andrew McHenry, Rev. Joshua Baskin, and James Dennis, Florida refuses to allow mob violence and silence to have the final word.
