Ceremony Friday to recall 1889 racial murder in Hunt County
Jul. 21—WOLFE CITY — An event is scheduled Friday evening in Hunt County, designed to highlight the need to discuss racial injustice.
In collaboration with the Equal Justice Initiative, the Greenville Interminesterial Alliance and the NAACP Greenville Branch, the Corporation for Cultural Diversity of Greenville is hosting a soil collection ceremony for George Lindley, a victim of racial violence who was murdered in Wolfe City on July 26, 1889.
The ceremony is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Friday at the Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church, 301 S. Spencer St., Wolfe City.
According to information from newspaper accounts, defendants charged with Lindley's death testified Lindley was among a group of Black workers who "had displaced the white laborers on the brickyards at Wolfe City." Lindley was chosen to be taken from his bed one night in order to whip him in an attempt to frighten off the remaining workers.
But as Lindley was being dragged away, he broke free from his captors, resulting in his being shot and killed. The newspaper articles do not detail what happened to the perpetrators of the killing.
Friday's event will take place outdoors. Those attending are asked to bring their own chairs, and masks are by individual choice. The solemn ceremony will include several readings, a message of remembrance, a song, and presentation of soil gathered from a location east of Wolfe City. A glass urn of soil taken near the place of death will have Lindley's name, site and date of his murder engraved on it and will be sent to the Equal Justice Initiative National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery Alabama. Additional urns will be for view in Hunt County.
It will be the second of three planned soil collection ceremonies in Hunt County. The previous event was conducted in Greenville in January in remembrance of Thomas Peddy, who was unjustly lynched in downtown Greenville on Jan. 11, 1885.
A third ceremony, in remembrance of the death Ted Smith, who on the morning of July 28, 1908, was dragged by a mob out of the Hunt County jail and set on fire as an estimated 2,500 people watched, has been announced but has not yet been scheduled.
The Equal Justice Initiative's Community Remembrance Project partners with community coalitions to memorialize documented victims of racial violence throughout history and foster meaningful dialogue about race and justice today. The Community Soil Collection Project gathers soil at lynching sites for display in exhibits bearing victims' names.
Additional information is available at the Equal Justice Initiative website at eji.org
