These High School Kids Are Helping Memorialize a Forgotten Lynching

“No one feared punishment, and no one was ever arrested.”

A crowd gathers at the lynching of Jesse Washington in Waco, Texas, in 1916.Library of Congress

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


On a Sunday afternoon in May, more than 100 people gathered on a grassy knoll sandwiched between a swamp and a construction company lot on the eastern outskirts of Memphis, Tennessee. Two high school juniors, Khamilla Johnson and Khari Bowman, stood before them and described how, exactly 99 years ago, a crowd at least 50 times as large had come to this very spot to watch the lynching of a black man named Ell Persons.

Persons, the teens recounted, had been arrested for the rape and murder of a white girl based on pseudoscientific evidence, such as a claim that his image was imprinted on her eyes. Before he could be tried, a white mob abducted him and brazenly announced the place of his torture and death. They chained him to a log, doused him in gasoline, and set him alight.

Library of Congress

Afterward, spectators took pieces of his charred corpse as souvenirs. A photo of his decapitated head was printed on postcards. Accounts of the day described a carnival-like scene: Parents brought their children, vendors sold snacks, and cars lined up for more than a mile. “No one feared punishment, and no one was ever arrested for the crime,” Bowman said.

The memorial event was the launch of a campaign to stamp Persons’ name in Memphis’ civic memory. It was also part of a nascent movement to rediscover and memorialize lynching sites across the South. The effort is led by Bryan Stevenson, the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, which has documented more than 4,000 lynchings of African Americans across 12 Southern states between 1877 and 1950. (The New Yorker profiled Stevenson in this week’s issue.) So far, the EJI has placed plaques at five sites. A plaque for Persons will be erected next spring. And in November 2017, EJI plans to open a museum and national lynching memorial in Montgomery, Alabama.

After Johnson and Bowman learned about Persons during a history class project, they and their classmates rallied around Stevenson’s call to unearth past racial violence and recognize its modern echoes. “History repeats itself,” said Justyce Knowles, a classmate of Johnson and Bowman. “We were all so upset about Sandra Bland, about Trayvon Martin, about Tamir Rice. I feel like, let’s keep it trending. Let’s make it a hot topic.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't find elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate