This chapter juxtaposes the history of the first Black-funded textile mill in the postbellum southern United States with the lynching of Tom Johnson and Joe Kizer. The study uses the opening of the Warren C. Coleman mill in the same year and town as the Kizer and Johnson lynching to examine the overlaps between white definitions of labor and justifications for racial violence. Through a study of the hammer and chisel used to break into a jail cell to abduct the two victims, the author examines the evolution of working memory in and of the South, particularly as it pertains to questions of race, gender, and age.