In the Florida Panhandle town of Marianna, a farm settlement between Pensacola and Tallahassee, a 23-year-old black field hand named Claude Neal was accused oftherape and murder of a 20-year-old white woman.
On the other hand, rates of robbery (theft with threat of harm), assault, rape and car theft remained largely unchanged, a finding which, at least for violent crimes, contradicts Messrs Lott's and Mustard's paper.