The Last Lynching Victim in South Carolina Brent M. S. Campney reviews William B. Gravely’s They Stole Him Out of Jail: Willie Earle, South Carolina’s Last Lynching Victim. October 31, 2019, Black Perspectives In They Stole Him Out of Jail: Willie Earle, South Carolina’s Last Lynching Victim , William B. Gravely, professor emeritus at the University of Denver, explores the 1947 lynching of Willie Earle in South Carolina, the criminal investigations and trials that followed, and the memory and legacy of those events. The product of some forty years of research, the book builds upon an impressive evidentiary base, including newspaper coverage by the Black and white presses, interviews with participants and witnesses, and letters and a notebook regarding the trial proceedings written by the British novelist Rebecca West, who was in attendance. Unfortunately, he notes, “no library, private holdings, attorney files, court records, or archive has a transcript of the trial”