Stone, Hopkinsville Kentuckian, November 27, 1896

Lynching Is In Order.

At eleven o’clock Monday night the wife of Prof. J. M. R. Green, of this city, was outraged by Jim Stone, a brutal negro living three miles south of town. At the hour named Mrs. Green was aroused from sleep by feeling the fingers of a man on her throat. She was unable to make an outcry, and her assailant presented a pistol, telling her he would kill her if she made an outcry. He then succeeded in accomplishing his purpose and escaping through a window, by which means he entered the house. Stone was arrested Tuesday and indications pointed strongly to a hanging that night, and a crowd was gathering for that purpose when the officers succeeded in taking the negro to Paducah and placing him in jail. The crowd followed on the midnight train, but when it arrived in Paducah, Stone had been taken to some other place and could not be found. It is the universal opinion that the negro is guilty and ought to be hung at once.--Mayfield Monitor. 

It is now known that the negro was taken to the country under guard for safe keeping. Prof. Green accompanied the mob to Paducah, carrying a rope in his hand. A special term of court may be called at once to indict and try the brute. Nothing but his speedy execution, by law or otherwise, will meet the requirements of the case. 

Stone was taken to Louisville Wednesday night and is now in jail there. He denies his guilt, of course, and now that he considers himself safe talks in a brazen way about the affair, referring to his victim as “the woman.” The Courier-Journal speaks of the rapist and ex-convict as “James Stone the young colored man charged with assault.” He is twenty-one years old and according to the same paper has “a good countenance.”