Alice Mitchell Murders Freda Ward in Memphis, 1892

Biography

Family, Intimacy, and Relationships

Sexuality / Sexual Behaviors

Science, Medicine, and Health

Politics, Government, and Law

Identities

Transgender

On January 25, 1892, on a riverfront railroad track, in Memphis, Tennessee, Alice Mitchell slit the throat of Freda Ward. Mitchell explained: "I killed Freda because I loved her, and she refused to marry me." The murder and subsequent trial brought new, national attention to intense, passionate, romantic and sometimes sexual (and soured) intimacies between women. This feature includes reprints of two major scholarly analyses of Mitchell and Ward's intimacy, the murder, and its aftermath. It also reprints reports about an African American woman, Emma Williams, murdering another African American woman, Eleanor Richardson, in Mobile, Alabama. The papers compared this to Alice Mitchell's murder of Freda Ward.

1800s

Lindquist, Lisa J.

Duggan, Lisa

Ward, Freda

Mitchell, Alice

Richardson, Eleanor

Williams, Emma

Tennessee

Memphis, TN

Alabama

Mobile, AL

mitchell