Turner was eight months pregnant at the time, but that fact elicited no mercy from the mob, who applied gasoline and oil to her pregnant body. They struck a match and lit it, burning off her clothes. Then, while she was still alive, one man took a knife commonly used for killing hogs and cut open her womb. The child fell from Turner’s midsection, and according to White, “The infant, prematurely born, gave two feeble cries and then its head was crushed by a member of the mob with his heel.”36 In the aftermath of this event, five hundred black people fled the community.
