Juneteenth remembrances: Leavenworth honors 3 lynching victims from a century ago
Richard Wood, Silas Wilson, Fred Alexander.
They are the names of three men lynched during the turn of the 20th century in Leavenworth, Kansas. Their names and stories were remembered and honored this Juneteenth weekend at a ceremony in Leavenworth Friday evening.
Juneteenth commemorates the end of slavery in the United States. All three lynching victims were Black men, according to the Kansas Historical Society.
Fred Alexander’s story received widespread attention following his horrific lynching in Leavenworth on January, 15 1901 after he was accused of rape and murder. Alexander, a veteran of the Spanish-American war, was never given a fair trial for these claims, and instead was met with a mob of 8,000 who brought him to a gruesome death.
Like Alexander, Wilson and Wood experienced the same injustice from the Leavenworth community at that time, and also died by lynching. Members of the mobs responsible for their deaths never faced any criminal charges for their vigilante actions.
Todd Thompson, county attorney in Leavenworth, said people shouldn’t take the law into their own hands in what they believe is justice, but which is really vigilantism.
“Every person deserves to have equal justice, everyone deserves due process and that was something not given to these three men. That was robbed from them,” Thompson said.
Thompson wrote a opinion piece for the Leavenworth Times about Silas Wilson, one of the lynching victims. In the column, Thompson told of the experience Wilson faced, detailing his charges and the injustice he faced from the Leavenworth community at that time.
Thompson said after hearing about the effort in Leavenworth to get a marker to commemorate the lynchings, including that of Fred Alexander, he looked into them all and found Silas’ story.
“I felt that Silas Wilson was a narrative of someone I could write a bit more easily about, and lesser known than Fred Alexander.”
This weekend, the community took time to honor and remember the injustice Alexander, Wilson and Wood faced over 100 years ago.
The Equal Justice Initiative hosted the event as a Historical Marker Celebration ceremony at the Bethel AME Church, where they unveiled the plaque created in honor of the three men.
“If you don’t remember the past it is doomed to be repeated, and something like this is absolutely necessary. For the community to remember — and as a community we don’t repeat it and we stay vigilant about continuing to progress forward,” Thompson said.
The Leavenworth community is also hosting several other events over the weekend to celebrate Juneteenth, including a twilight parade and festival with live music and games.
