RACIAL TERROR LYNCHINGS IN NEWBERRY and LYNCHING IN AMERICA
RACIAL TERROR LYNCHINGS IN NEWBERRY
After the Civil War, emancipated Black people in Alachua County bought their own land and established a rural farming community from Jonesville to Newberry with farms, churches, a school, and local businesses. Many white residents were violently resistant to racial equality and terrorized Black people to enforce Jim Crow segregation and racial hierarchy. On September 1, 1902, a mob of 300 white men seized two Black mine workers, Manny Price and Robert Scruggs, from law enforcement, hanged them, and riddled their bodies with bullets. Fourteen years later, on August 18 and 19, 1916, white mobs including a state senator, a local sheriff, community leaders, and well-known citizens lynched six Black men and women from Jonesville after a Black farmer was accused of mortally wounding a Newberry constable. A mob abducted Jim Dennis from his home and shot him to death, and another mob hanged Bert Dennis, Mary Dennis, Stella Young, Andrew McHenry, and Reverend Josh Baskins here in "Lynch Hammock". These events are often referred to as "The Newberry Six" lynchings, but oral history suggests that a Black man named Dick Johnson and two unidentified Black victims were also lynched during this bloody weekend. Seven years later, during the racial terror of the Rosewood Massacre, a white mob abducted Abraham Wilson from jail on January 17, 1923 and also lynched him here in "Lynch Hammock." In none of these lynchings was anyone held accountable.
ALACHUA COUNTY COMMUNITY REMEMBRANCE PROJECT
2021
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LYNCHING IN AMERICA
Between 1877 and 1950, thousands of African Americans were the victims of lynching and racial violence in the United States. Florida had one of the highest per capita lynching rates in the nation, with dozens of racial terror lynchings documented in Alachua County. The lynching of African Americans during this era was a form of racial terrorism used to intimidate Black people and enforce racial hierarch and segregation. After the Civil War, white people resistant to equal rights and hoping to maintain racial hierarchy attacked and lynched Black women, men, and children for asserting their rights, leaving plantations, participating in politics, working toward economic independence, violating white social customs, being accused of crimes, or for sheer racial terror that was random and arbitrary. These acts of violence were accommodated by courts, law enforcement, and white officials in Newberry who did little to protect Black people's constitutional rights of to hold mob participants accountable. Florida has at least 317 documented victims of racial terror lynchings between 1877 and 1950, dozens of whom were lynched in Alachua County. The area where you now stand is often referred to as "Lynch Hammock" or 'Hangman's Island" due to the many racial terror lynchings that occurred here. This marker reminds us of the racial terror that took place in Newberry and honors all of the known and unknown lynching victims in this community
EQUAL JUSTICE INTITIATIVE
2021