A racial justice group backed by the NAACP and a white Roanoke councilman will soon erect a blue historical marker where a mob lynched a Black man in 1893.
An educational workshop Sept. 8 will precede the sign’s unveiling, scheduled for Sept. 21 along Franklin Road in Roanoke. Organizers hope the events generate public awareness and discussion about racism, said Brenda Hale, chair of the local NAACP chapter.
“There are thousands of people that live in this city that are not aware that two Black men have been lynched in Roanoke, Virginia,” said Hale, who is joined by 30 others in the coalition working on the sign.
Titled the Roanoke EJI Community Remembrance Project Coalition, the group arose from an ongoing conversation about the city’s history and a shared desire to counteract racism, Hale said.
Other coalition leaders include Amy Christine Hodge, pastor at Mount Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church in Roanoke, vice chair; Councilman Bill Bestpitch, city representative; and Jennie Waering, a former assistant U.S. attorney, who serves as recorder, Hale said. The initiative is resident-led and not a city government undertaking, although area municipal government and school representatives helped, according to Bestpitch and coalition records.
People are also reading…
The Equal Justice Initiative, a Montgomery, Alabama, legal defense and advocacy organization, offered to provide the sign through its “community remembrance” project and has helped guide local organizers. It may send a representative to the events.
According to EJI’s website, “it is critical for communities across the country to do the difficult work of unearthing and confronting their own histories of racial injustice, while exploring how that history continues to shape the present.” EJI also operates its National Memorial for Peace and Justice, sometimes called the national lynching memorial, and a museum about slavery and its legacy, both in Montgomery.
Racism, Hale said, is “like an open wound. The wound will never heal until you start treating it. The treatment now in 2022 is conversation, talking about it, recognizing that we still have a problem.”
As reported by this newspaper, law enforcement had jailed Thomas Smith in 1893 on allegations that he assaulted a white woman, who was found severely injured.
When members of a white mob demanded Smith’s release to them, the local militia provided lethal resistance. But his assailants took Smith to Mountain Avenue and Franklin Road and hanged him from a tree on Sept. 21. The vigilantes burned his body near the Roanoke River on a fire fueled by cedar trees and coal oil as thousands watched, The Roanoke Times reported.
The first of two markers will stand near the site of that lynching, Hale said. Bestpitch said public right of way will be used.
In February of the previous year, a mob lynched William Lavender near the Roanoke River in Roanoke. Also accused in an alleged black-on-white crime, he died at an unknown location, Bestpitch said. “We think it’s very close to where Ore Branch comes out into the river,” he said.
The Lavender lynching sign will probably go on the north river bank across from the now-closed Ramada Inn, also on public right of way, he added. The date of its completion has not been announced.
The coalition will introduce its work and objectives to the community Sept. 8 at the Claude Moore Education Complex, 109 North Henry St. A news conference is scheduled at 5:30 p.m. followed by the program at 6 p.m. Officials haven’t set a time for the marker unveiling Sept. 21.
Coalition member Hodge looks to see the project magnify understanding and, ultimately, forgiveness over racial terrorism. “When you put things into remembrance, I think still you have to put things in forgiveness,” she said, “so you don’t come out with an unpleasant memory or an unpleasant experience.”
Hodge, who is Black, draws inspiration from her great, great grandmother Amy Finney, a slave until emancipation when she was 15. She become a landowner in Martinsville, lived with values and stood tall in the community, said Hodge, who expressed pride to use the same first name.
Finney modeled “this we-can-do-it kind of attitude,” according to Hodge. Finney’s land with a house are still in the family, she said.