Oh it was becuase of their race for sure. For the type of man who joins a lynch mob, the only thing worse than a black man being black was him being “uppity”.

The black community resisted the lynching and stood up for the poor bastard they wanted to murder. Their prosperity as a community and individually gave them the fortitude to fight back.

It wasn’t “because they were rich”. It was because they had agency and dared to stand for their rights as a community. For a person who believes that the color of your skin makes you an inferior or superior human, that is an unforgivable affront.