Location: Broward County, Florida
Age: 30
Year: 1935
Rubin Stacy, 30, was a tenant farmer who was lynched July 19, 1935 by a group of men in Broward County, Florida.
Stacy was accused of frightening a white woman with a knife. En route from Broward County Jail to Dade County Jail, a mob overpowered police deputies, seized Stacy from police custody, hung and shot him. Subsequent investigation revealed that Stacey had gone to the white woman’s house to ask for food, and the woman became frightened when she saw Stacy’s face. A subsequent inquest sought to establish if the police had colluded with the lynch mob. Law enforcement were exonerated.
Papers from the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching (ASWPL) in the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive, show how Stacy’s lynching was used by Nazi organizers to criticize the US.
In February, 2022, the family of Rubin Stacy successfully campaigned to have a 2-mile section of Davie Blvd. in Fort Lauderdale renamed Rubin Stacy Memorial Blvd. This stretch of road is close to where Stacy’s lynching took place.
An essay on this case, researched and authored by a CRRJ student, is available.
Stacy was also referred to as Ruben Stacy, Ruben Stacey, Rubin Stacey, and Reuben Stacey in local press reports and documents relating t the case, now housed in the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive.
Read more about Stacy’s 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.
Stacy's Files From the Archive
More from the Burnham-Nobles Digital Archive
Pvt. Booker T. Spicely, a World War II veteran, was killed by bus driver Herman Lee Council in Durham County, North Carolina in 1944, after a confrontation regarding Spicely’s refusal to give up his seat.
Eugene Bell, age 22, a WWII veteran and farmer, was killed in 1946 in Amite County, Mississippi.
Read more...
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