Other influences on Foote's writing were Tacitus, Thucydides, Gibbon and Proust. Foote would later recall that Greenville fitted with Southern stereotypes "in some fairly superficial ways and departed from them in the most important ways", noting that "There was never a lynching in Greenville; it never got swept off its feet that way. The Ku Klux Klan never made any headway, at a time when it was making headway almost everywhere else." Despite Foote's citation, Greenville was the site of at least one lynching some 30 years before Foote's time there, when in 1903, John Dennis, a black man, was accused of raping a white woman and was lynched by some white citizens of Greenville. According to EJI, at least 13 lynchings took place in Washington County, of which Greenville is the county seat, between 1877 and 1950.