Location: Johnston County, North Carolina
Age: 26
Year: 1946
Dan Carter Sanders, 26, was a sawmill worker and WWII veteran who was killed in 1946 by Bobby Johnson, in Johnston County, North Carolina.
Sanders and an unidentified person had allegedly stolen hound dogs from Johnson’s yard, frightening Johnson’s mother.
Johnson, 16, and his father Robert Johnson, along with Lester Phillips, Russell Hatcher, and R.H. Stephenson organized to go after Sanders on foot and by car.
As Sanders fled from them, Johnson fatally shot him.
A grand jury declined to indict.
For more information, search CRRJ’s archive.
Read more about Sanders’ death on the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive
About the Archive
The Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive houses case files and documents for more than 1,000 cases of racial homicides in the Jim Crow South. Co-founded by Melissa Nobles, professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Margaret Burnham, CRRJ director and professor of law at Northeastern, these uncovered stories highlight how violence affected lives, defined legal rights and shaped politics between 1930 and 1954.