Community members gathered for a ceremony under the Richland bridge Saturday morning to commemorate a black man who was lynched in 1881 and begin a deeper conversation about racial injustice.
The event commemorated the lynching of Christopher Davis, a black farmhand and father of two, who was hung off of the old South Bridge by a mob of over 30 white men in 1881 after being accused of sexually assaulting a white woman.
The ceremony hosted eight speakers and two singers to reflect on Davis’ lynching and the ongoing themes of racial injustice in the country and in the community. Among these speakers was Cherrie Hendricks, the president of Mt. Zion Baptist Church Preservation Society, who said she wanted to unite the community in a larger conversation after this event.
“It is my fervent and unyielding dream that as we heal this breech by looking back so that we can move forward, because it is not taboo to go back and fetch that which is at risk of being left behind. So we can move forward as a whole and complete healed community,” Hendricks said.
The event’s organizers were pleased by the turnout. Susan Righi, the event’s emcee, said she only expected about 75 people in attendance. There were about 150 people in the crowd.
The event was hosted in part by the Equal Justice Initiative, or EJI, an Alabama-based nonprofit that represents people wrongfully convicted of crimes. Gabrielle Daniels, a representative from EJI, spoke about understanding and combating racial inequality at the event.
“We each have a role to play in this conversation and it’s so vital that we each find our entry point into it somewhere,” Daniels said. “We at Equal Justice Initiative deeply encourage people to understand the history, to be willing to have difficult conversations, to come to spaces where those conversations are happening ... and to be willing to talk about what does it mean for us to create a more just society.”
EJI’s Community Remembrance Project travels the country to gather soil from lynching sites to honor those who died.
Community members gathered soil during the ceremony from the approximate location of Davis’ lynching. A sample will be displayed to the public at the Southeast Ohio History Center in Athens in an exhibit chronicling the lynching, according to a press release. Another sample will be sent to the Legacy Museum and Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama.
