Scearce, Simon

In 1904 Simon Scearce, a 15-year-old from Lexington, KY, was the first African American in Kentucky to be publicly whipped since before the Civil War. Scearce's crime was hitting a white boy.

Police Judge John J. Riley ordered Scearce's mother to take him to the public square and give him twenty lashes with a buggy whip. There was a large audience for the whipping. The story of the whipping was printed in major city newspapers in states such as New York, Illinois, Ohio, Nebraska, and Iowa.

For more see "Court orders boy whipped," New York Times, 6/14/1904, p. 1.