On this day in 1917, in Memphis, Tennessee, a white mob seizes from custody Ell Persons, a Black woodcutter who had been tortured by police into confessing to the murder of a white girl, despite leads pointing to a white man. Thousands of people gather near the Wolf River, in anticipation of a lynching, newspapers having advertised the site the day before. Children are kept out of school to attend the carnival-like event. Vendors sell food and drink.

The mob ties Mr. Persons to a log, pours gasoline over him, and burns him alive. Afterward, people fight over pieces of his body and clothes to take as "souvenirs." A car full of people drives through town, displaying Mr. Persons’s decapitated head, eventually throwing it onto Beale Street. No one is held accountable for any of the violence.