Memphis Daily News

The interfaith prayer ceremony Sunday, May 21, marking the centennial of the lynching of Ell Persons included several mentions of the removal of Confederate monuments in the last month in New Orleans.

But during the two-hour ceremony in a field off Summer Avenue near the lynching site there were no overt calls for the city of Memphis to take the same approach of removing such monuments without advance notice.

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen of Memphis called the actions in New Orleans “commendable.”

When a pair of new historical markers on Summer Avenue are unveiled later this month, it will be the latest milestone in current discussions about what happened long ago in Memphis.

The markers will be unveiled at and near the site where Ell Persons was burned by a lynch mob 100 years ago this month.

The May 21 ceremony marks 100 years to the day that a group of men took Persons from a train bringing him back to the city to stand trial for the rape, murder and decapitation of 16-year-old Antoinette Rappel.

In a year, a group of religious leaders hopes to draw at least 5,000 Memphians to an area off Summer Avenue by the Wolf River where 3,000 gathered nearly a century ago as a man was burned alive.

The Lynching Sites Project of Memphis gathered Sunday, May 22, in a field by a Wolf River oxbow, 99 years to the day that Ell Persons was lynched at an event that was covered by local newspapers in advance.