March 29, 2024
Annapolis, US 41 F

Historical marker to be placed at Whitmore Park to memorialize Anne Arundel lynchings

Photo: Equal Justice Initiative

There were at least 40 racial terror lynchings of African Americans in the State of Maryland, between 1875 and 1933.

On Saturday at 10:00am, a historical marker will be placed near the site of the former county jail where, on December 21, 1906, Henry Davis was kidnapped by a white mob, dragged through the streets to terrorize the black neighbors who bore witness, and lynched. After they hanged him, his murderers shot him more than 100 times. Photographs of his mutilated body were sold as souvenirs.

This marker will memorialize five local African American victims of lynchings, killed between 1875 and 1911, along with victims who remain unknown.

The public is invited to gather on Saturday September 7, 2019 at 10 a.m. across from the Arundel Center on Calvert Street in Annapolis. Special guests and speakers will include County Executive Steuart Pittman, community activist Carl Snowden, the Reverend Dr. Carletta Allen, Delegate Joseline Peña-Melnyk, and a representative from the Equal Justice Initiative.

A post-unveiling discussion with light refreshments will be hosted at Asbury United Methodist Church on West Street immediately following the ceremony on the topic of “Who we are and where are we going as a nation.”

Local Annapolis social justice group Connecting the Dots is presenting the dedication and unveiling ceremony in partnership with the City of Annapolis, Anne Arundel County, the Maryland Lynching Memorial Project, and the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) —Montgomery, Ala.-based founders of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice–in connection with EJI’s Community Remembrance Historical Marker Projects, which focus on confronting the legacy of racial and economic injustice and inequality in America. EJI and local Community Remembrance coalitions who work to erect historical markers, recognize that the legacies of the era of American enslavement of African descendants included the era of racial terrorism that was defined by more than 4,400 racial terror lynchings between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and World War II in the 1940s and 50s, the era of Jim Crow segregation and discrimination that produced the civil rights movement, and our present-day era of mass incarceration.

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