Their attorney, Nathaniel Jerome Frederick, successfully appealed their convictions and secured a new trial. On Oct. 7, 1926, Demon Lowman was acquitted. Bertha and Clarence still faced judicial proceedings. They never received that opportunity.

In the early morning hours of Oct. 8, Bertha, Demon and 14-year-old Clarence Lowman were removed from the Aiken County jail and murdered. The court had not sentenced them to die. A mob did.

Placing the 1922 Wagener incident beside the 1926 Lowman lynching raises an important question: When was the law permitted to run its course?

Murry Quattlebaum was accused of shooting a police chief. He fled, surrendered, was jailed, obtained bond, served on a chain gang, escaped and surrendered again. His actions were serious, and telling his story responsibly does not require making him a hero. Yet throughout his encounters with authorities, recognizable mechanisms of law remained available to him.

The Lowmans were also inside the legal system. They had been arrested, prosecuted and convicted. Their attorney appealed, the appeal succeeded and a new trial followed. But when that process began producing a different result, extrajudicial violence intervened.

That distinction is what makes these histories so important. Due process has meaning only when it protects people even when accusations are serious and emotions are intense. Lynching replaced courts, evidence, attorneys and appeals with mob authority.

Nearly a century later, Wagener, Monetta and Aiken remain connected by more than geography. Remembering Murry Quattlebaum and the Lowmans together does not mean equating their experiences. Instead, their contrasting stories challenge us to consider a fundamental question:

What happens to justice when the law is allowed to work for some — but is taken into other hands for others?