Black History

Fight Continues to Install Plaque Memorializing Madison County Lynchings

THE TENNESSEE TRIBUNE — The Jackson Madison County Community Remembrance Project will continue trying to install a plaque that would memorialize three lynchings which took place in the late 1800s in Madison County. The JMCCRP is a partnership with the Equal Justice Initiative that consists of Madison County and Jackson citizens. The coalition is focused currently on installing the plaque, despite the plaque having been voted down at a Madison County Commission meeting in June.

Published

4 years ago

July 23, 2019

Malorie Paine

By Malorie Paine

JACKSON, TN — The Jackson Madison County Community Remembrance Project will continue trying to install a plaque that would memorialize three lynchings which took place in the late 1800s in Madison County.

The JMCCRP is a partnership with the Equal Justice Initiative that consists of Madison County and Jackson citizens. The coalition is focused currently on installing the plaque, despite the plaque having been voted down at a Madison County Commission meeting in June.

The plaque would provide information about the three known people and the events that took place on one side of the plaque, and on the other side, there would be information about lynchings that took place throughout America.

Dr. Cindy Boyles, JMCCRP project manager, said the plaque is meant to draw attention to the events so that others may research the events. The lynchings took place without due process, and it’s important to talk about that, Boyles said.

Though lynchings no longer take place, today’s society is still very much shaped by the historical inequalities that took place, she said.

“It impacts us today,” Boyles said. “In the United States, we’ve remained very silent about the impacts of slavery, the end of the Civil War, lynching and the Civil Rights Movement. Our silence really hasn’t worked for us. We may not have lynchings today, but we can clearly see the impacts of the lack of due process through mass incarcerations that we have today.”

Talking and learning about the events are the first step in the healing process, Boyles said.

“We tried to say if we don’t talk about it and we don’t look at it, and we put it under the rug, everything will get better, but everything has not gotten better,” Boyles said. “We still see racial divides between people, we still see economic and racial disparities between whites and African Americans and other minorities. If keeping quiet had worked, we really shouldn’t see any racial and economic disparity.”

The plaque would be funded through the EJI, Boyles said. This is part of a movement taking place across the South and other areas of the county, she said.

Dr. Liz Mayo, another JMCCRP member, said she was disappointed but not surprised that the Madison County Commission had voted against the installation at the County Courthouse. However, she feels the plaque is an important step in moving forward. Mayo said she was born and raised in West Tennessee, but did not learn about the lynchings that had taken place in Madison County until she was in graduate school at The University of Memphis.

“I’m a native West Tennessean, born and bred in this area, and this was not part of my K12 education,” Mayo said. “I wondered why did I not learn this when I was growing up. Why did it take me until graduate school to find this out?”

Mayo is an educator and says she makes it a point to talk about the history in her own classroom.

“Students still in the South are not learning about the true history of what happened with lynch mobs in this region,” she said.

The plaque is important not just for remembrance but as a sort of recompense of the past to make amends, Mayo said.

“It’s also really powerful to say to someone ‘This happened to you, and I recognize it. We’re not going to bury it anymore and pretend it didn’t happen to your ancestors,” Mayo said.

Mayo believes it is her responsibility to acknowledge the past and work to change to future. She feels the historical plaque would be one way to begin that process.

“There’s a form of cultural gas lighting that occurs when we try to tell someone that racism is in the past and that it doesn’t matter anymore,” Mayo said. “Instead of doing that, if we own and say ‘You know what, my ancestors were awful to your ancestors, and I’m sorry for that. Even if I didn’t personally do it, I’m still benefitting from those things that occurred during those times and places that have kept underrepresented minorities down and have given me a leg up.’”

Mayo wants to see all people work together to change the trajectory of the future and move towards a less racist society through acknowledging and dealing with the past.

The JMCCRP will work to determine other locations in Madison County that would also be appropriate for the historical plaque.

This article originally appeared in The Tennessee Tribune.

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The Case Against SB357: Black, Vulnerable and Trafficked

on April 25, the committee approved Senate Bill 14 which would make human trafficking of minors a felony and strikable offense forcing exploiters to serve 80% of their sentence.

Published

3 weeks ago

May 20, 2023

Oakland Post

Nola Brantley is the co-founder of MISSSEY. Photo courtesy of Nola Brantley.

PART 8 – Come Back to Humanity

Although California Senate Bill 357 was intended to alleviate arrests of willing sex workers under anti-loitering laws, The Black, Vulnerable and Exploited series has established that passing SB 357 and other similar legislation harms Black communities, one of the most vulnerable and traumatized groups in America.

Over the past several weeks, overwhelming evidence against SB 357 has been presented showing why sex trafficking disproportionately impacts the Black community and how decriminalizing sex buying and exploitation will further harm vulnerable Black communities.

By Tanya Dennis and Vanessa Russell

One year and one day after Blair Williams had killed herself by walking into traffic on a busy freeway, her sister, Brianna Williams, testified before the California Senate Public Safety Committee on the horrors of sex-trafficking.

Soon after, on April 25, the committee approved Senate Bill 14 which would make human trafficking of minors a felony and strikable offense forcing exploiters to serve 80% of their sentence.

Passed with bi-partisan support in the committee, the bill means a lot to people who have been trafficked as it shows that the punishment for trafficking will be equal to the crime.

Currently, exploiters who receive 10 years for trafficking a minor may be able to get out in as little as two years. This practice of letting someone out after selling a child has created apathy among survivors who wonder if anyone understands the pain and torture they endure. The unanimous acceptance of this bill in committee is helping survivors to feel protected and valuable.

Led by Senator Aisha Wahab, the committee, which included senators Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh, Steven Bradford, Senator Scott D. Wiener and Oakland’s Nancy Skinner, unanimously passed the bill written by Senator Shannon Grove.

At the hearing, Brianna Williams, a Black 28-year-old woman who was sex-trafficked in Oakland at the age of 13, shared the story of her sister Blair, who was terrorized, raped, and tortured by her exploiter.

Suffering a mental break, Blair walked onto a freeway where she was instantly killed on April 24, 2022.

Williams described Blair as a beautiful young lady, who was an avid reader and creative who loved to play with her niece and nephews and aspired to be an attorney. Blair died at the age of 23. Many senators teared up as they contemplated the torture Blair endured.

At the age of 17, Williams was able to exit with the help of nonprofits and churches who invested in her life, providing workforce development, education, mentoring, and legal help.

To address the harm that is being done to vulnerable people such as Black girls, anti-trafficking organizations are asking leaders and legislators and even proponents of full decriminalization for sex work to ‘come back to humanity’ and reconsider an ‘equity model’ that decriminalizes the exploited but maintains accountability for the buyers and exploiters.

The equity model would also provide funded exit services including mental health, housing, workforce development, and legal services for the exploited. These services would provide an opportunity for the trafficked to start again, an opportunity that 76% of women, men and transgendered people are asking for.

However, making buyers and exploiters accountable does not mean applying blanket life sentences.

Human trafficking cannot be ‘criminalized’ away, supporters of the new bill say, and instead they call for thoughtfulness and empathy regarding the intentions of those involved and ask tough questions.

Many exploiters have been abused and groomed into becoming exploiters in the same way the exploited are.

There are early intervention diversion programs that can help first-time sex buyers and exploiters take ownership for the harm they have caused, process the root of their behavior, and begin to heal and change.

Giving buyers and exploiters a platform to be accountable and make amends improves their lives, the lives of the families they are also harming, and hopefully bring some healing to the harmed.

Nola Brantley, a survivor, co-founder of Motivating, Inspiring Supporting and Serving Sexually Exploited Youth (MISSSEY), and CEO of Nola Brantley Speaks says, “As service providers, we must unite and support one another because this is very important and hard. We can’t do it alone. We need each other and the community needs us to be in solidarity!”

For more information, go to ResearchGate and Layout 1 (depaul.edu)

To get involved, join Violence Prevention Coalition for a City Wide Peace Summit on June 24^th from 10:00 a.m.- 4:00 p.m. at Laney College in Oakland. To register, go to https://www.eventbrite.com/e/city-wide-peace-summit-tickets-622795647547

Tanya Dennis serves on the Board of Oakland Frontline Healers (OFH) and series co-author Vanessa Russell of “Love Never Fails Us” and member of OFH.