Biography
Thomas Brown was a Black Decatur defendant arrested August 21, 1933 after Mrs. George Dugger accused him of rape. The September 6 Daily Worker reports that he was moved from Decatur to Huntsville amid lynch threats and returned for a September 5 trial, when an all-white jury convicted him and Judge James E. Horton imposed death by electrocution. The newspaper alleges a racial frame-up and describes troops guarding the courthouse and jail and defense notice of appeal. October 13 was the scheduled execution, not proof it happened. Actual confinement through the September trial is documented, but the precise final discharge or death and complete custody total are unknown. This qualified record is distinct from the unrelated eighteenth-century Loyalist Thomas Brown. Source: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1933/v10-n214-sep-06-1933-DW-LOC.pdf#page=1
