Lenoir County, NC
Alleged offense: Insulting white girls
Legal intervention (in alleged offense): No
Legal intervention (following lynching): Yes
Mob size: Unrecorded
Mob members: Unrecorded
Alleged victim: N/A
Household Status: Unmarried
Prior to his lynching, a black man named Lazarus Rouse allegedly made a number of comments, perceived to be disrespectful, about some of the white women in Lidell, North Carolina. Rouse’s remarks supposedly lost him a job as a farmhand and angered some of the white population in the area. On the night of Tuesday, August 1st, 1916, two men arrived at the house of Celia Rouse. When Mrs. Rouse answered the door, one of the men forced her aside, entered the home, and shot her son Lazarus Rouse in the face whilst he was asleep on a bed nearby. Though Lazarus Rouse’s mother maintained that it was two white men with blackened faces, Rouse himself (he lingered before he died) accused his brother John. Upon further investigation it was revealed that John and Lazarus had a rivalry over a woman in the neighborhood; John’s alibi freed him of all suspicion. The officers investigating the case found 14 empty cartridges at the Rouse household and learned that three horses had been tied up to a fence nearby. Although Celia Rouse recognized the voice of the man demanding entry to be a well known planter, his identity was never disclosed to the newspaper.
Death certificate: None found
Census: None found
Liddell Negro is Victim White Men, Authorities Hear
Town: Liddel, North Carolina
Latitude/Longitude: 35.174492 -77.812371
Rationale: Nearest town. No specific location given for the Rouse household.
Researcher’s Note: Lazarus Rouse died on Saturday, August 5th, 1916. Some sources report his death takaing place in 1915.