Preston Smith, a Black man from Lynchburg, South Carolina, lost his life on January 7, 1897, in the middle of a killing spree that stunned the quiet farming communities stretching between Lynchburg, Magnolia, and Sumter. His name appears in surviving records alongside those of Benjamin Esau Wilson, Wesley Wilson, and Mrs. Wilson, all killed that same morning, marking him as one of several victims of a single, brutal rampage. Contemporary listings of gun deaths and local accounts remember him sim
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