Alonzo Tucker

Alonzo Tucker, 28, a married boxer who ran a small gym called the School of Physical Culture and also worked as a boot black and mail carrier, was lynched in Marshfield (now Coos Bay) on September 18, 1902, the day after a white woman accused him of assaulting her near the 7th Street bridge. Tucker was arrested without resistance that evening, but as word spread, an armed mob of as many as 200 men formed. While being moved to keep him from the mob, Tucker escaped and spent the night hiding under the town's docks. He was found the next day and shot; the mob then put a noose around his neck and began dragging him toward the site of the alleged assault, but he died of his wounds along the way. His body was hanged from a light pole on the bridge in broad daylight before roughly 300 spectators, none of them masked. Local newspapers described the mob approvingly and no one was ever indicted; Coos Bay's small Black community largely fled the area afterward out of fear. In 1974, a local newspaper reporter located and interviewed three elderly men who had witnessed the lynching as boys; all three said they believed Tucker's relationship with his accuser had actually been consensual. It remains the only documented lynching of a Black person in Oregon's history. A historical marker was dedicated at the site in 2021 following a multi-year memorialization effort.

Coos Bay, OR · Coos County

• 1902: Case opens — victim reported missing or found.
• Documented milestones (renewed investigation, media coverage, family advocacy) to be added as sourced.
• Present: case remains unresolved. No named suspect has been convicted.

• Victim identity, background, and the September 17–18, 1902 date and circumstances, per the Equal Justice Initiative's historical marker and the Oregon Remembrance Project.
• No one was ever indicted for the lynching; three eyewitnesses interviewed in 1974 said they believed the underlying relationship had been consensual, per the same sources.

• The identities of individual mob members were never formally investigated or prosecuted, despite the lynching occurring in broad daylight before hundreds of unmasked witnesses.
• What became of Tucker's accuser and her family, who left the area for California shortly after the lynching, was never documented.

• Equal Justice Initiative — historical marker, “Lynching in Coos County”
• Oregon Remembrance Project — case summary
• Project Cold Case
• Murder Accountability Project
• NamUs