Tag: Lynching Sites Project

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Lynching Sites Project adds more Memphis markers

CREDIT: Lynching Sites Project

Communities can’t heal from wounds of the past without facing them first.

That is the premise behind the Lynching Sites Project (LSP) of Memphis, which aims to memorialize the known lynchings in the Shelby County.

Over the weekend, the group and community members gathered to dedicate its third marker, which commemorates the 1893 lynching and death of Lee Walker. Walker, a young black man accused of sexually assaulting two white women, was dragged from the Shelby County Jail by a mob, beaten, and then hanged in an alley near A.W. Willis and Front.

LSP was formed about two years ago, and it’s comprised of residents who “want the whole and accurate truth” to be known about people like Walker and other victims affected by racially motivated violence in the county’s history. Jessica Orians, media strategist for LSP, said the goal is to have an accurate historical marker at each site.

Lynching Sites Project

marker for Lee Walker

“Without the Lynching Sites Project, these horrors of the past would never be known,” Orians said. “We try to make things right by telling the entire story.”

The group is actively searching for lynching sites based on the NAACP’s 1940 definition of lynching: “There must be legal evidence that a person has been killed, and that he met his death illegally at the hands of a group acting under the pretext of service to justice, race, or tradition.”

Shelby County has a recorded number of 35 lynchings between the Civil War era and 1950. That’s more than any county in Tennessee.

Margaret Vandiver is the lead researcher in charge of identifying the victims and sites of the county’s lynchings. By studying historical documents and old newspapers, as well as interviewing surviving family members, Vandiver and a team of volunteers “piece together the stories of the victims,” Orians said.

“It’s a tiring and critical process,” Orians said. “It’s just like detective work.”

Vandiver and team are in the process of identifying two more lynching sites, which are expected to be confirmed by the end of the year.

Orians said many people are weary of the group’s work, questioning if incidents like lynchings should be be dug up from the past. But, Orians said without the project, people would never know the truth of the past and the victims would remain nameless.

“We try to turn on the light of truth,” Orians said, quoting Ida B. Wells. “The way to bring about racial healing is to make these sites known to the public. It’s important to us that these atrocities in history that no one knows or talks about can be brought to light so we can learn and heal the present racial tensions.”

Orians said memorializing the “horrific events” aids in moving forward and bands people together, by creating a sacred place where people can learn and heal.

In addition to the group’s work at lynching sites, they also meet bi-monthly, facilitating “listening circles,” where community members can come and talk through racial issues. Orians said the goal of the meetings is to figure out ways to move forward and heal the “painful wounds of the past that people are still bearing.”

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Don’t Fence Me In

Bruce is on vacation this week. Y’all let the man fish.

Some thoughts on this week’s issue and more …

• Last Monday, on my walk to the Big River Crossing from work, I crossed over the pedestrian bridge near the south entrance to Tom Lee and emerged into a cage, literally. What with all the rogue beavers and bears and zoo babies and new Blue Suede Brigade, the situation was if not startling then definitely weird.

It was, of course, just Memphis in May shoring up the park and preparing for load in for this weekend’s fun. You can read all about the Beale Street Music Festival in this issue, including a trio of features about Snoop Dogg, Booker T. Jones, and Dead Soldiers and a full rundown of all the acts performing. Fingers crossed for good weather.

The Flyer‘s building happens to be very close to Tom Lee. Even with all the Memphis in May-induced traffic hassles (which promise to be worse this year with all the construction at the Brewery … already feeling pre-rage), it’s a pretty ideal location. I’ve been a vegetarian for 14 years, but one of my greatest pleasures is taking the bluff steps down to the park during Barbecue Fest and giving the park a loop-around or two. (There’s also plenty of junk to eat, so don’t you worry about me.)

One new development with Barbecue Fest this year is that Wednesday night will now be open to the public. Wednesday has been, for as long as I can remember, friends and family night, just sort of a chill evening before all the craziness. According to a Memphis in May rep, there were so many folks in the park on Wednesday already, it made sense to open it to the public.

But the new NEW development is that there is a new event. Are you sitting? Sauce wrestling. Word is, there will be an actual wrestling ring covered in a tarp covered in barbecue sauce. So gross. I love it.

• How does so much dog hair get in the fridge?

• Michael Freakin’ Donahue, everybody!

• I just saw a commercial of a lady shaving her armpits … with a huge, huge grin on her face as if swept away in the bliss of shaving one’s pits. This does not happen. Nope. Stop it.

• I finally found a 901 Rock. Is this still a thing? Is Railgarten the new 901 Rock? I was told I need to put it back in the wild, but since I found it in a semi-scary, litter-strewn alley, I feel like I earned it. Can I throw it at somebody?

• Also in this issue is a viewpoint by Martha Park. She wrote the Flyer‘s cover story on the Ell Persons lynching last year. In the viewpoint, she writes about student involvement in the Lynching Sites Project, which “shin[es] the light of truth on lynchings in Shelby County, Tennessee.” One teen said, “We learn about Martin Luther King all the time, but we didn’t learn this history” — a notion shared by others in the viewpoint. At a time when Trump was quoted as saying, “People don’t ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?,” the more hard facts out there the better.

I’m not the first person to point out the parallel stories of Civil War monuments and the Lynching Sites Project. A statement from the city of New Orleans, which recently took steps to remove its Civil War monuments, reads, “[the monuments] failed to appropriately reflect the values of diversity and inclusion that make New Orleans strong today.” Shouldn’t we able to make that same statement here?

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Opinion Viewpoint

Hard History: The Lynching Sites Project

This time last year, the 100th anniversary of Ell Persons’ lynching seemed far on the horizon. A lot has happened over the course of the year, as Memphians have rallied around the work of the Lynching Sites Project.

Students at Overton High School raised the $2,500 required to fund a historic marker that will be placed on the Summer Avenue bridge spanning the Wolf River. Members of the Central High School Key Club went to the site to clear brush and make a path. Students from several schools were present at LSP’s event commemorating the People’s Grocery lynching.

Earlier this spring, more than 1,500 Central High School students and teachers gathered at an assembly to hear the story of Ell Persons’ lynching; Hattiloo Theatre presented The Strange Fruit, a reflection on the legacy of lynching, in partnership with Memphis Symphony Orchestra and Collage Dance Collective; and Facing History and Ourselves students led a community teach-in about lynching history in the South.

I met with Overton High School seniors Khari Bowman, Taylor Williams, Alexis Sledge, and Kam Johnson, and Central High School students Myles Franklin, Amal Altareb, Talia Glenn, Ethan Haley, and Nina Howard to ask them about engaging with this history. Students at both schools expressed a frustration with the way history has been taught in the classroom:

“We learn about Martin Luther King all the time, but we didn’t learn this history,” Alexis said.

“Memphis history is not all Elvis and Beale Street. It’s a combination of the good and the bad,” Kam said.

“If you can talk about individual battles in a war, you can talk about a lynching,” Ethan said.

For these students, learning about Ell Persons inspired a renewed enthusiasm for history: “There are these lynchings that are literally down the street in our city that we don’t know about. It’s not even curriculum. To find out something new, it made me want to learn more,” Talia said.

Kam wondered, “What other history has been forgotten in Memphis?”

“We didn’t know about Ell Persons. … Imagine what else happened that we don’t know about yet,” Alexis said.

Nina said, “This marker is really important, because now people will pass [the site] and realize they’re passing history.” Of course, since this time last year, our country also elected a new president, Donald Trump, one who is so markedly different from former President Obama that it’s hard to begin to quantify. This election has caused many of us to reorient and wonder what happened to the country we thought we were working toward. I asked students what this work means in light of Trump’s election.

“[Trump] is the epitome of why we should know our history,” Alexis said.

While Obama addressed the legacy of slavery, segregation, and the criminalization of black and brown lives, the new administration cashes in on white fears and nostalgia. Our current president neglected to mention Jews on Holocaust Remembrance Day, and his press secretary claimed Hitler did not use chemical weapons on his own people. As our country’s leader, this president will not model or encourage a complex understanding of our history. We have to do that work ourselves.

“Our ancestors went through too much for us to give up. We have to be what they fought for,” Taylor said.

All the students I spoke with said learning about this history inspired conversations with family members. For Central High School junior Ethan Haley, Persons’ lynching quickly became personal. “My great-grandfather had actually gone to this lynching,” he said. “I didn’t know that. Now, it’s more of a personal thing. I represent a change in my family.”

At the Sunday, May 21st memorial service, Overton High School students will dedicate the historic marker that is the culmination of over a year of research, writing, and fundraising. The descendants of Antoinette Rappel, whose murder led to Persons’ lynching, will be present. LSP members are working to reach out to Persons’ descendants, too.

The May 21st event will mark not the end of the Lynching Sites Project’s work, but the beginning. There were over 30 documented lynchings in Shelby County, more than any other county in Tennessee. Four of the locations have been identified so far, and LSP hopes to place a historical marker at each site.

At the Facing History and Ourselves Teach-In, Ethan closed his presentation by reminding participants that an estimated 5,000 people were present at Persons’ lynching. What if 5,000 were present at the memorial?

Originally from Memphis, Martha Park is the Philip Roth Resident in Creative Writing at Bucknell University’s Stadler Center for Poetry.