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Memphis group joins effort to identify, memorialize all lynching sites in the South

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.

Memphis and the Lynching at the Curve

Thomas Moss symbolized the urban entrepreneurial class of African Americans that emerged in the decades following the Civil War. Moss invested in a community-owned grocery store, the People’s Grocery, which he managed at night after spending his days working as a postman. The People’s Grocery was located at the southeast corner of what is today Mississippi Blvd and Walker Ave, known then as “the Curve” for the distinctive turn that streetcars made at the corner.

History of Lynchings in the South Documents Nearly 4,000 Names

On Tuesday, the organization he founded and runs, the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala., released a report on the history of lynchings in the United States, the result of five years of research and 160 visits to sites around the South. The authors of the report compiled an inventory of 3,959 victims of “racial terror lynchings” in 12 Southern states from 1877 to 1950.

Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror

Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror documents EJI’s multi-year investigation into lynching in twelve Southern states during the period between Reconstruction and World War II. EJI researchers documented 4075 racial terror lynchings of African Americans in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia between 1877 and 1950 – at least 800 more lynchings of black people in these states than previously reported in the most comprehensive work done on lynching to date.

When the Mob Ruled

From Lethal Punishment: Lynchings and Legal Executions in the South, by Margaret Vandiver. (Chapter 8, When the Mob Ruled: The Lynching of Ell Persons is attached at the bottom of this page.)

Used with permission.

Memphis group joins effort to identify, memorialize all lynching sites in the South

Memphis and the Lynching at the Curve

History of Lynchings in the South Documents Nearly 4,000 Names

Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror

When the Mob Ruled

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