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
Sources
The August 24, 1933 Daily Worker reports that Brown had been moved from Decatur to Huntsville before a lynch mob searched the Decatur jail. The mob then went to Huntsville twice demanding that he be surrendered. According to the report, Sheriff Ben Giles refused to hand him over on both occasions. This describes threats and continued jail custody before Brown’s later September trial. Source: Daily Worker, August 24, 1933, printed page 1.
