82:" was found, he was said to have confessed, and was sent to Leesburg jail. The mob that arrived at the jail consisted of up to thirty men who were "disguised". Two of the undisguised men led another, dressed up as a prisoner, to the jail, and thus they fooled the jailer and made their way inside. Anderson was hanged and died in minutes, and was then shot in the head, the body, and the leg. Deputy Sheriff Laycock stated that he was unable to identify the undisguised men because they were "strangers" who were not local to the county.
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and some other newspapers) as her assailant, but was unable to identify him as the perpetrator. After
Anderson was released, he was arrested again based on circumstantial evidence, and apparently confessed to the crime. Two days later, at one in the morning, he was taken from his jail cell by a group
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An interpretive sign developed by the
Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority (NOVA Parks) and the Loudoun County Chapter of the NAACP, and placed at the site of the lynching in 2019, provides a different account of what led to the accusation. Fourteen-year-old May Leith had reported that she had
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A historical marker was put up in 2019, with descendants of both the
Anderson and Leith families invited to the ceremony, as part of the Loudoun County Remembrance and Reconciliation Initiative. A press report a few days before the event noted that while Anderson's relatives would attend, it was
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published on
November 9, 1889, reported that "The work was done quietly but effectually." There were no convictions related to Anderson's murder. The state of Virginia did not pass an anti-lynching law until 1928, and lynching was not recognized as a federal offense until 2022.
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reported that on
November 6, 1889, Miss Leith, described as "a school girl about seventeen years old" (some sources have her aged 14 or 15), returned home from school at the Hamilton Academy, and was "feloniously assaulted". Leith named Orion Anderson (called "Owen" by the
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unclear whether May Leith's descendants would appear. On June 19, 2019, a group of almost 200 people gathered to march from the old jail to the site where he was lynched. Following the ceremony, soil taken from the site where
Anderson was killed was sent to the
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been scared and chased by a person with a guano sack, a cloth bag used for fertilizer, over his head. It adds that Orion was the son of Thomas and
Charlotte Anderson, and had nine brothers and sisters, and notes that he was buried at
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of a hundred armed men, who had seized the keys from
Officer Charles F. Laycock. They hanged him at the freight depot, and shot him as well.
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22:(1875–1889) was a 14-year-old African American who was shot then hanged, on November 8, 1889, in
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and the NAACP, 100 occurred in
Virginia; of these, 83 of the victims were African Americans.
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2019, a historical marker was placed at the site of the old rail station where he was killed.
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As of 2019, the murder of Orion
Anderson was the second of three recorded lynchings in
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182:"First Of Three Young, Black Lynching Victims In Loudoun County To Be Memorialized"
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214:"Interpretive Signs and Programs: Telling all the stories of our nation's past"
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382:"A Landscape Scarred by Lynchings; Va. Lives With Legacy Of Terror and Grief"
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offers additional detail, and differs in some aspects from the report in the
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26:, by a white mob. His murder was the second of three recorded lynchings in
422:"Lynching is now a federal hate crime after a century of blocked efforts"
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315:"A Youthful Mahoneite: Lynched for an Outrageous Assault on a White Girl"
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Contemporary newspaper accounts differ in details. The
420:McDaniel, Eric; Moore, Elena (March 29, 2022).
151:List of lynching victims in the United States
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220:. Vol. 54, no. 9. pp. 46–49
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348:Racial Terror: Lynching in Virginia
530:Incidents of violence against boys
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520:Child murder in the United States
515:1889 murders in the United States
447:"History of Lynching in America"
255:. The Historical Marker Database
212:Gilbert, Paul (September 2019).
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321:. November 9, 1889. p. 1
292:. November 8, 1889. p. 1
117:Historical context and legacy
525:Deaths by person in Virginia
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344:"Orion Anderson in Loudoun"
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253:"The Orion Anderson Story"
352:James Madison University
123:Loudoun County, Virginia
28:Loudoun County, Virginia
218:Parks & Recreation
486:39.11083°N 77.56361°W
38:Accusation and murder
545:November 1889 events
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387:The Washington Post
139:Montgomery, Alabama
127:Tuskegee University
88:The Washington Post
74:. According to the
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504:Categories
477:77°33′49″W
474:39°06′39″N
157:References
80:guano sack
32:Juneteenth
396:409960027
230:EBSCOHost
407:ProQuest
392:ProQuest
145:See also
49:Richmond
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354:. 2022
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