Fort Lauderdale's day of infamy: the 1935 lynching of Rubin Stacy

By Jane Feehan

I first wrote about this day of evil as a student at Virginia Commonwealth University during the 1970s. I had read about it in a book from their library and then presented the story in class. In 2010 I first posted this piece.

Amazing how after all these years, the city finally acknowledges the lynching. Times have indeed changed; published "news" stories about this dark day now abound.

Old (and not so old) histories of the city failed to mention Fort Lauderdale’s day of infamy, July 19, 1935. 

On that day, African American Rubin Stacy (published also as Reuben Stacey, or Rubin Stacey) 37, was seized by a mob from the custody of six Broward County deputies as they were transporting him to a jail in Dade County for “safekeeping." He had been accused by a 30-year-old white woman of a knife attack in her Fort Lauderdale home, 

The mob, estimated by deputies to be about 100 men with faces covered and license plates hidden, took Stacey, kneeling in prayer, to an area near the house of accuser Marion Jones. There, they hanged and then shot him 16 times.  

Jones claimed Stacey knocked on her door asking for a glass of water and then followed her inside where he pulled a knife to her throat. Her screams, she said, frightened Stacey off. She later recanted the story. Some say Stacey was a homeless tenant farmer going from house to house asking for food.

It was widely believed that deputies, then led by the notorious Sheriff Walter Clark, were in collusion with the mob. They were, the story goes, angered by the slow legal proceedings of another case involving an African American.

Pictures of the lynching were shown to President Franklin Roosevelt in hopes of swaying him to support a federal anti-lynching law.  It didn’t have the impact hoped for; Roosevelt did not endorse the law because he feared losing Southern votes.

Rubin Stacey is buried in Fort Lauderdale’s Woodlawn Cemetery. He was born in Georgia.

Copyright ©2010, 2020, 2022 All rights reserved. Jane Feehan.

                      

Sources:                                                                    

Palm Beach Post, July 19, 1935

Miami News, July 21, 1935

Palm Beach Post, June 13, 1937

www.findagrave.com

July 21, 1935

Tags: Fort Lauderdale lynching, Fort Lauderdale history, 

Rubin Stacy, Reuben Stacey, Fort Lauderdale black history, history of Fort Lauderdale, Jane Feehan