History

Mary Holzman

resident, victim of mob violence · active 1912

A white woman of about thirty-five living at Ocean City with an eleven-year-old son, taken from her bed by a mob in late May 1912, marched to the fishermen's camp on the edge of town and dipped repeatedly in the pot used for tarring nets. The town's authorities had warned her months earlier to leave "for the good of public morals"; she said the true grievance was a false charge that she harboured Black men, and that she was the victim of defamatory gossip. She left Ocean City, was sheltered by a Black neighbour named Tom Jones three miles out in the country, and was taken under the sheriff's protection to Snow Hill, where she demanded an investigation. Warrants issued for eight men; none was served. Nothing further about her appears in any 1912 newspaper read.