Lynching of Benjamin Thomas
Benjamin Thomas (1883/1884 – August 8, 1899) was a 16-year-old Black teenager who was lynched in Alexandria, Virginia on August 8, 1899. He had been arrested the day before and put into jail before a mob broke into the jail, dragging him outside, before beating him and ultimately he was hanged to death. He was the second of two reported lynching victims in Alexandria; the first, almost two years earlier, was Joseph H. McCoy.