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Newspapers advertised the sermon to be delivered June 21, 1903, a Sunday evening. Crowds gathered outside Olivet Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, Delaware, to hear Robert A. Elwood warm to his theme, "Should the murderer of Helen Bishop be lynched?"

On June 16, seventeen year old Bishop had been assaulted on a rural roadside near Price's Corner; she died of a neck wound the next day. Late on the 17th a local Black farm worker, George White, was arrested for the murder. Police allegedly found a bloody knife in his possession. There were no eyewitnesses to the attack....