According to MonroeWorkToday , the lynching of Walter Allen is referenced in A Festival of Violence: An Analysis of Southern Lynchings, 1882-1930 and Fitzhugh Brundage's Lynching in the New South: Georgia and Virginia, 1880-1930 . Mr. Fitzhugh, specifically, notes: Precisely why alleged rapes were such a conspicuous cause of lynchings in the Upper Piedmont [a portion of the northern half of the state of Georgia] is hard to learn. The location of many of the lynchings for sexual offenses, however, is suggestive. Nearly half occurred either along the fringes or within the environs of Atlanta and Rome... The lynchings on the periphery of Atlanta and Rome probably were testimony to the fears of whites that the day-to-day controls on black life in the countryside were losing their effectiveness and the conviction that symbolic violence was needed to restore black deference and fear. Macon Telegraph (Georgia) Wednesday, 2 April 1902 -- pg. 1 [via GenealogyBank ] PEOPLE OF ROME, GA.,...
(and Other Crime and Criminals of the Peach state)