A local church-based group is working to locate and memorialize the site of every post-Civil War lynching in Shelby County.
The group, which is calling itself "Responding to Racism," is led by three retirees, all white and all members of First Congregational Church.
Rev. Randall Mullins, a retired United Church of Christ minister, sent an email to more than a dozen local clergy on Friday asking them to join the effort and recruit others.
"Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel wrote, 'Without memory there is no culture. Without memory there would be no civilization, no society, no future,'" Mullins said in his email.
"May we be bold and faithful to all the memory that keeps us human."
The group includes retired professor Tom Carlson and retired oceanographer George Grider. Along with Mullins, they were inspired by the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative's effort to identify the location of every lynching in the South from 1877-1950...
David Waters, Commercial Appeal