On the morning of April 21, 1887 Jennie Bowman, a domestic servant employed in Old Louisville, was brutally assaulted by burglars. The young white woman lived long enough to identify her attackers as two African-American men. Within days the police had two suspects confined in jail. The stage was now set for the horror that plagued the black community during the Jim Crow era. On the nights of April 29th and 30th, a massive lynch mob, reportedly over 10,000 strong besieged the city jail. However they were thwarted by the determined stand of state and local officials. Although vastly outnumbered, the local militia, supported by a Gatling gun, stopped the mob in their tracks. This program, both a Victorian detective story and a glimpse of racial justice in old Louisville, reveals how the city escaped the shame of lynch law during an era of increasing racial tension.