John Lowman

John Albert Lowman, 42, a White man, was killed in Elmira, New York, in October 1942 after an evening of heavy drinking that began downtown and ended in a rented room on East Church Street. He had grown up in the Elmira area and, according to later reporting, his life had been marked by stretches of steady work and long stretches of instability—periods of unemployment, repeated intoxication arrests, and nights spent drifting through parks and cheap rooms.

The person who quickly emerged ...