Lynching marker honors 6 victims who were killed in Sarasota-Manatee County by mobs
Three Kuumba drummers ushered more than 300 people on Saturday from the Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota with their West-African instruments to a new marker that memorializes six known Sarasota-Manatee County lynchings.
Since 2018, community leaders have been working to get a physical commemoration of Sarasota-Manatee’s historical lynching victims. The marker was initially discussed to be placed in the historically Black neighborhood of Newtown, but some residents were hesitant to support having a daily reminder of the harsh reality of violence that many African Americans have faced.
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From 1882 to 1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred across the U.S., according to the NAACP. In Manatee and Sarasota County, the legacy of lynching – where a mob kills someone for an alleged offense without a legal trial – and racial injustice has left an unforgettable impact on the Black community. Almost six years in the making, the community remembrance marker sits just off Fruitville Road behind the church.
It honors the lives of six Black men: Henry Thomas, who was lynched by a white mob near Parrish on March 8, 1903; a man referred to as Mr. Rudy, who was lynched following a dispute with an employer about wages on March 6, 1910; two brothers, Sam and Wade Ellis, who were lynched on March 7, 1910 after “interfering” with Rudy’s lynching; Willie English, who was lynched on July 2, 1912 after a white woman alleged he spoke to her in a “insulting” way; and James Franklin was shot and killed on April 4, 1934 by a white man with the assistance of two law enforcement officers who were supposed to be taking him to a physician for a wellness exam.
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The creation of the marker was a joint effort led by the Boxser Diversity Initiative and included support from Manasota ASALH, Newtown Alive and the Sarasota African American Cultural Coalition. The Sarasota and Manatee Community Remembrance Project worked in collaboration with the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative to create the marker.
Caryl Sheffield, chair of the historical marker dedication committee, said that while the unveiling of the marker may seem like a solemn occasion, it was a celebration that honored the six men and countless others who were unjustly killed.
“Given the climate of assault on the lives, culture and history of African-Americans in the state of Florida, this is a momentous occasion, a serious yet joyous and uplifting occasion, an opportunity for all of us to show that we care about the lives of African Americans,” Sheffield said. “This is not a funeral. It is not a memorial service. It is a celebration of survival.”
Sheffield’s own grandfather, Caeser Sheffield, was lynched in Lake Park, Georgia in 1915 after he was accused of stealing meat from a smokehouse. He was jailed, and in the middle of the night, he was taken by a mob and led to a field by the railroad tracks where he was shot in the back and left for dead.
It’s a history that many members of the Black community know all too well. JoAnn Ford, a Sarasota resident of 20 years, attended the marker unveiling and said that after several of her family members were lynched, her family fled from Georgia to Ohio during the Great Migration, where 6 million Black people fled the South from racial violence during the 1910s to the 1970s.
Ford was pleased with the diversity of people who attended.
“There’s a peace for me,” Ford said following the unveiling of the marker. “We’re finally acknowledging it, even though we carry it all time, just recognizing that this happened and not acting as if it didn’t.”
Prior to the unveiling of the marker, James Stewart, the former president of the national and Manasota branch of ASALH – an organization that promotes and preserves Black history and culture – performed a libation ritual which called on the ancestors of the Black community to visit. The ritual is performed by pouring a liquid into the ground to summon and honor the spirits of the ancestors and request their approval during the commemoration of the lynching victims who were honored.
“We hereby declare that the sacrifices of those commemorated today will never be forgotten,” Stewart said after pouring a libation for each man lynched. “We assembled here and pledged to do everything in our power to create a world devoid of racialized violence and to confront racial hatred and bigotry in all its distasteful forms.”
Contributing: Samantha Gholar, Sarasota Herald-Tribune
This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Lynching marker honors 6 victims who were killed in Sarasota-Manatee County
