In spring of 1897 African American editors were outraged when President William McKinley ignored the lynching of an Ohio man, “Click” Mitchell. In somewhat sensational style, the Indianapolis Freeman depicted the mob scene, with insets showing the prisoner being removed from jail and lynched. The Richmond Planet noted in its own pages that the unmasked lynchers had murdered the innocent Mitchell in broad daylight: “No lynching in the South was ever more daring or atrocious.”
George L. Knox purchased the Indianapolis Freeman from Edward E. Cooper in 1892 and transformed the newspaper from a Democratic-leaning, independent paper into a loyal Republican Party press. Knox was well connected with the state party leadership, and under his editorship the paper fully supported Booker T. Washington’s philosophy of accommodation.