Felix Hall

Pvt. Felix Hall, 19, a Black soldier from rural Alabama serving in the segregated 24th Infantry Regiment, disappeared at Fort Benning on the afternoon of February 12, 1941, after finishing a shift at the base sawmill and telling two friends he was heading to the Post Exchange — the only place on the segregated base where a Black soldier could get a hot meal. He never arrived. Six weeks later, an engineer unit found his body hanging from a tree in a ravine near the Chattahoochee River, his hands tied behind his back and his feet bound with baling wire. A military doctor ruled the death a homicide, but for four months the War Department and base authorities publicly suggested to the press that Hall may have died by suicide, contradicting their own examiner's finding, until the NAACP demanded a real investigation. The FBI and War Department identified suspects, including two military men, but never charged anyone, and appear to have ignored a report that Hall's white civilian supervisor at the sawmill had threatened to kill him the day before he disappeared. It remains the only known lynching to have occurred on a U.S. military base. The case went cold until 2014, when Northeastern University students began investigating it, leading to a 2016 Washington Post exposé built on a previously undisclosed 130-page FBI file. In 2021, the Army dedicated a memorial plaque at Fort Benning; the plaque itself states that Hall's death was among the events that helped convince President Truman to order the full integration of the U.S. armed forces in 1948.

Fort Benning, GA · Chattahoochee County

• 1941: 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 February 12–March 28, 1941 timeline, per the Washington Post's 2016 investigation and the U.S. Army's 2021 memorial plaque text.
• A military doctor ruled Hall's death a homicide; the FBI and War Department identified suspects but never charged anyone, per the same sources.

• No one was ever charged or convicted in Hall's killing.
• Why the FBI and War Department did not pursue the reported threat from Hall's civilian supervisor, or fully investigate the two military suspects identified, was never explained in the released case file.

• The Washington Post — “The story of the only known lynching on a U.S. military base in American history”
• Army Times — “Fort Benning memorializes Black soldier lynched in 1941”
• Project Cold Case
• Murder Accountability Project
• NamUs