The 1911 Oklahoma Lynching of a Black Mother and Her Son: Laura and L.D. Nelson

The rows of sleeping witnesses still stand within eyeshot of the air space where the corpses of Laura and L.D. Nelson once dangled over the North Canadian River while a gang of bloodthirsty white men stood atop the bridge under which their lifeless bodies hung.

It is 2020 — one hundred and nine years since the horrific lynching of a Black mother and her 14-year-old son.

The Old Schoolton Bridge has long since been replaced by the State Highway 56 Bridge, but the landscape remains the same: still, murky waters fill the basin while towering oak trees line the red-dirt beaches.

It was likely a spectacular Spring morning in Oklahoma — the sun just warm enough and the breeze just cool enough not to pay the weather any mind — the kind of day that can change a mood from bad to good just by stepping into the sunshine.

Twenty-three days prior, on May 2, 1911, Okemah deputy sheriff, George Loney and his associates went to the Nelson’s farm on a lead that Laura’s husband, Austin, had stolen a cow from a neighbor.

Upon arrival, Loney noticed a muzzle-loaded shotgun on the wall of the cabin. When he told one of his officers to take it off the wall and unload it, Laura became incensed, telling the men not to touch their…