Last week, I visited the acclaimed Legacy Sites in Montgomery, Alabama, including the Legacy Museum, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and Freedom Monument Sculpture Park. These new national landmark institutions “chronicle the legacy of slavery, lynching, and racial segregation, and the connection to mass incarceration and contemporary issues of racial bias.”
African American law professor Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, led the development of these legacy sites. Stevenson has a philosophy about race in America that I share, “If we do not engage the past, we will never move forward into the future.” The Legacy Sites are a means of pushing us in that direction.
I call the National Memorial for Peace and Justice the lynching museum. Below, I have noted some of the museum’s information about lynching.
Many lynchings occurred at the drop of a hat: Grant Cole was lynched in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1925 after he refused to run an errand for a white woman.
Otis Price was lynched in Perry, Florida, in 1938 for walking past a window while a white woman was inside bathing.
Henry Patterson was lynched in Labelle, Florida, in 1926 for asking a white woman for a drink of water.
John Stoner was lynched in Doss, Louisiana, in 1909 for suing the white man who killed his cow.
Elizabeth Lawrence was lynched in Birmingham in 1933 for reprimanding white children who threw rocks at her.
General Lee was lynched in Reevesville, South Carolina, in 1904 for knocking on a white woman’s front door.
David Hunter was lynched In Laurens County, South Carolina, in 1898 for leaving the farm where he worked without permission.
William Wardley was lynched in Irondale, Alabama, in 1896 because local white merchants wrongly thought his money was counterfeit.
Warren Powell, 14, was lynched in East Point, Georgia, in 1889 for “frightening” a white girl.
Many people participated in lynchings: Elias Clayton, Isaac McGhie, and Elmer Jackson were lynched by a mob of 10,000 people in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1920.
Will Brown was lynched in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1919 by a riotous white mob of up to 15,000 people, John Hartfield was lynched in Ellisville, Mississippi, in 1919 by a white mob of several thousand people.
Ellis Persons was lynched by a mob of 5,000 people in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1917.
Horace Duncan and Fred Coker were lynched in Springfield, Missouri, in 1906 by a mob of 5,000 people, Fred Rochelle, 16, was burned alive in a public spectacle lynching before thousands in Polk County, Florida, in 1901.
Henry Smith, 17, was lynched in Paris, Texas, in 1893 before a mob of 10,000 people.
Fred Alexander, a military veteran, was lynched and burned alive before thousands of spectators in Leavenworth, Kansas, in 1901.
And it went on and on.
William Stephens and Jefferson Cole were lynched in Delta County, Texas, in 1895 after they refused to abandon their land to white people.
Bird Cooper was lynched in Claiborne Parish, Louisiana, in 1908 after he was acquitted of murder charges.
After a white man attempted to assault Jack Brownlee’s daughter in Oxford, Alabama, in 1894, Mr. Brownlee was lynched for having the man arrested.
A black man was lynched in Millersburg, Ohio, in 1892 for “standing around” in a white neighborhood.
Jim Eastman was lynched in Brunswick, Tennessee, in 1887 for not allowing a white man to beat him in a fight.
After Calvin Mike voted in Calhoun, Georgia, in 1884, a white mob attacked and burned his home, lynching his elderly mother and his two young daughters, Emma and Lillie.
A reign of terror indeed.
