By Vanessa Gregory
The April 29th issue of the New York Times has an excellent article by Vanessa Gregory, a writer based in Oxford, Mississippi. The article, "A Lynching's Long Shadow" is about the important story of Elwood Higginbotham; a story from our area that had national implication in the larger tragedy of lynching.
LSP's Executive Director, John Ashworth is quoted in Gregory's writing: "...remembering men like Higginbotham is delicate work. He (John) has researched cases in which family members had no idea their relative was lynched or didn’t wish to revisit the traumatic story, and he has seen others in which the killing grounds have been obliterated by parking lots or office buildings. But for descendants who can and do participate in memorialization efforts, he said, the process can be healing. “It is a validation of their humanity,” Ashworth said. “At least somebody cares about what happened.”