For many folks in the Bay Area knowledgable of local history, the last lynching in California is thought to have occurred in San Jose in 1933. That famous lynching in St James Park in downtown San Jose was praised by California Governor Sunny Jim Rolph. There was no follow up prosecution then of the lynching, as there have rarely been incidents of lynching that were investigated by the authorities. When the community is outraged, law enforcement has traditionally stepped aside in the interest of justive.
The last instance of lynching in California in fact occurred Sixty Six years ago in near Gazelle in Southern Siskiyou County. In the early morning hours of Jan. 6, 1947, a small mob of local ranchers wounded and captured a suspected Black cattle rustler on a ranch owned by a well known Yreka medical doctor.
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The accused was taken to the village of Callahan and hanged from the utility pole in front of Callahan's one room school house.
Siskiyou County Sheriff's Deputies, and officers of the California Highway Patrol conducted a preliminary investigation of the scene after students had arrived for school, and the Siskiyou County Coroner removed the victim's body at approximately 10 AM, just as Miss Mary Roff's students were allowed outside for first recess.
On Friday, January 10, 1947, the (Etna/Scott Valley) Western Sentinel newspaper carried a front page story about the lynching of a butcher from Weed, California. During the following weeks, an effort was made to recover all copies of the Jan. 10th issue of the Western Sentinel, and the school students were told that they were never to discuss the incident again.
The best evidence show that not only was no effort made to apprehend the perpetrators, but that there was an active cover-up of the crime by both local and state officials from Yreka.
