In this episode, we talk with Jen Bennie, a researcher with Lynching Sites Project and the host of the YouTube channel "Walk with History." She investigated a case of an unnamed man who was lynched in Memphis on Jan , 1851. In this case, Black man shot the county clerk who declared his freedom papers a forgery as he attempted to board a boat headed north. It is the first recorded lynching in Shelby County and extremely rare to happen before the Civil War. Though more than two dozen papers reported the lynching, none mentioned his name. Jen's experience highlights the difficulty of locating key facts about these significant historical event because of the deeply rooted disregard for Black lives that continues today.
Source date:
Jan 3 2022 (all day)
