Remembering Their Lives – Frederick County Lynching Victims

Please join the Frederick Remembrance Memorial Coalition, a part of the Maryland Lynching Memorial Project on Saturday, May 13, 2023 from 2:00 – 4:00 p.m. at South End Park Pavilion, Frederick, MD as we gather together to commemorate the lynching victims in Frederick County. “There were at least 6,500 lynchings in the United States between 1865 and 1950, and of that number, at least 38 were in Maryland.” In Frederick County, three documented lynchings took place, and the victims were James Carroll (1879), John Biggus (1887), and James Bowens (1895).

This event will center around remembering the lives of these men by sharing their stories and collecting soil from locations near where the victims were lynched. The soil will be placed in jars provided by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) as part of their Community Soil Collection Project. One jar will be sent to the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) in Alabama, a second will be preserved by African American Resources Cultural and Heritage Society (AARCH) in Frederick, and a third jar will be sent to Baltimore, MD. Our keynote speaker is Dr. Terry Scott, Director of the Institute for Common Power, past Chair of the Hood College History Department, and author of “Lynching and Leisure: Race and the Transformation of Mob Violence in Texas.”

If you plan to attend, please register through our Eventbrite link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/remembering-their-lives-frederick-county-lynching-victims-tickets-616152808637. This will help us to have an estimated number of community members attending the event and to add you to the email list for future Frederick Remembrance Memorial events.