Brutal Lynching in Limon, CO

On this day in 1900 15-year-old Preston John Porter Jr was lynched by a white mob in Limon, CO. Ostensibly because he had confessed to the murder of a white farm girl named Louise Frost on Nov. 8. There was no evidence of this other than Preston, his brother and father were the only negros in Lincoln County and so had to be the murderers, at least one of them. On November 12, all three were arrested and taken to the city jail in Denver. After the Porters had been in jail for four days, newspapers reported that Preston had confessed to the crime “in order to save his father and brother from sharing the fate that he believes awaits him.” It was a terrible fate, as a mob of 200 stopped the train from Denver at a depot 3 miles west of Limon and assaulted the sheriff of Lincoln County, taking Preston from the train; chained to a railroad stake, and burned alive. Despite enormous press coverage identifying multiple members of the mob, no investigation into the lynching was conducted and the coroner concluded Preston died “at the hands of parties unknown.”