Civil rights activists are seeking to draw attention to an 1882 rape that ended with the Black teenage victim dying in prison, her white attacker dead and three men lynched. Margaret Vinegar was 14 when two family friends intervened while she was sexually assaulted under a downtown Lawrence bridge in Kansas. The Lawrence Journal-World reports that the body of her attacker, David Bausman, was later found in the Kansas River. Arrests ensued and a mob broke into the jail, hanging the two friends and Margaret’s father. Margaret was convicted of murder, tried on a story that she enticed her attacker so her friends could rob him. Activists are now seeking to erect a marker in remembrance of her.
