Editing Wetumpka, Alabama (section)

===Lynchings===
{{Main|Lynchings in Elmore County, Alabama}}

A number of [[lynching]]s took place in and around Wetumpka during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The largest lynching took place on June 17, 1898, when a mob of 500 described as "some of the best and most prominent citizens of Elmore and Coosa counties" stormed the county jail where Solomon Jackson, Camp Reese, Louis Spier and Jesse Thompson were being held.<ref name="RobinWhite">"[https://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/story/news/2018/04/24/murder-robin-white-george-howard-eji-montgomery-lynching-memorial-legacy-museum-peace-montgomery/499623002/ The lynching of Robin White and the confession of George Howard]" by Brian Lyman, ''The Montgomery Advertiser'', April 24, 2018.</ref> A few prominent citizens and a Methodist minister tried talking the mob away from violence but they were unsuccessful. The sheriff had hidden the jail keys so that the mob couldn't get into the cells but they took a crowbar and took the cell doors off of their hinges and kidnapped the four men. The mob originally planned to burn them alive but thought that troops would intervene, so instead the men were hanged.<ref>The Topeka State Journal, June 17, 1898, p. 3.</ref><ref name="RobinWhite"/><ref>"[https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1898/06/18/102115479.html?pageNumber=10 LYNCHING IN ALABAMA: Five Negroes Who Murdered Mr. and Mrs. Carden and Carlee Hanged by a Mob]," ''[[The New York Times]]'', June 18, 1898, Page 10.</ref><ref>''The New Crisis'', [[NAACP]], The Crisis Publishing Company, January/February 2022, page 42.</ref>