Biography
Barney Lee Ross was a twenty-three-year-old Black man prosecuted in Morris County, Texas, after being accused of assaulting a white woman near Daingerfield. Officers moved him to Greenville to protect him from a lynch mob in November 1931. Rangers guarded the courtroom at his brief November 10 trial, in which the defense offered no testimony and he was sentenced to death. Ross was held at the Hunt County jail before his transfer to the state penitentiary. The International Labor Defense protested his conviction and sought to prevent his execution. Texas electrocuted him at Huntsville on December 18, 1931.
The Donley County Leader, November 19, 1931, page 1, individually captions Ross on the right in a photograph of two condemned men sharing Hunt County Jail at Greenville. It calls him a Morris County defendant facing execution for an assault accusation near Daingerfield and says the two men read little and seldom spoke to one another. The caption gives age twenty-two, differing from twenty-three in the established biography; that discrepancy is retained without deriving a birth date. The man on the left is James Williams, age twenty-seven, a Hunt County homicide defendant. Shared confinement does not make the two co-defendants or establish that either had already been executed. Ross's existing identified portrait and independently verified December 18 execution are preserved. Source: https://newspapers.swco.ttu.edu/bitstream/handle/20.500.12255/64805/DCL_1931_11_19.pdf?isAllowed=y&sequence=1
November 1931 protective transfers and a bounded birth-year lead
The November 8, 1931 Midland Reporter-Telegram, page 8, carries a November 7 Greenville dispatch reporting Ross in jail there after officers rushed him from Daingerfield the preceding night, November 6, to avoid a lynch mob. It also reports his guarded return to Daingerfield and indictment on November 7. This establishes custody by November 6 but does not establish the initial arrest day, so the existing November 1931 month precision is retained. His reported age of twenty-three supports 1907 or 1908 as a research window, not a uniquely confirmed birth year or date. His later trial and execution remain separate events.
Donley County Leader, November 19, 1931; relevant page stated in the accompanying profile note.
The anti-lynching article refers to the Texas prisoner executed on December 18 as Bonny Lee Ross. The state, execution day and case context support a period spelling variant for the existing Barney Lee Ross record. The article’s characterization of the prosecution is attributed advocacy reporting. No name, exact death date, custody endpoint or total is changed by this corroboration.
Young Worker also printed his name Bonnie Lee Ross.
