Memorial Project researchers identify 4 more lynching victims

From the end of Reconstruction in 1877 until about 1950, more than 4,400 African-Americans were lynched in a reign of racial terror in America, according to the nonprofit Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) in Montgomery.

Beginning in 2018, the Jefferson County Memorial Project — a grassroots community coalition — has worked to honor African-Americans killed in the Birmingham area.

Part of that work’s been done by the JCMP College Fellows, area students who’ve conducted extensive research into the victims.

In September, the JCMP chose its second group of fellows — 29 students from six Jefferson County colleges.

On Feb. 20, the students released their report — “Jefferson County’s Broken Systems” — during an event at Birmingham Museum of Art.

They discovered four victims — Otis Brown, Tom Edmunds, Jim Hatter and Fred Spencer — bringing the number of people lynched in Jefferson County to 34.

Brown was killed by a mob in 1886 near Five Mile Creek. Edmunds was murdered in 1899 near Blossburg by a mob that included a judge.

Hatter and Spencer both were killed in 1910 near Dolomite.

The students built on the work of the 2019 fellows, who discovered one victim, Jake McKenzie, killed in Brookside in 1897.

He’s now memorialized on a marker at Sloss Furnaces installed by the JCMP in September.

He was the 30th lynching victim found in the county, in addition to 29 listed originally on the Jefferson County pillar at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, which the EJI opened in 2018.

Prior to this fall, victims had been uncovered mainly through digitized national archives, but the JCMP refined its methods.

“We realized that local newspaper sources, which only exist on microfilm and have not been digitized, have yet to be looked at,” JCMP Project Director Abigail Schneider told Iron City Ink in January.

This year’s fellows searched local newspapers in the Birmingham Public Library archives, such as The Bessemer Workman, Birmingham Iron Age, Jefferson Enterprise and The Warrior Breeze.

“Jefferson County’s Broken Systems” helps show how local media, law enforcement, businesses and residents were complicit in racial terror.

For example, fellow Sheila Blair discovered that a policeman, a year after killing McKenzie, murdered another black man.

“Exploring this history was intimidating in the beginning, but I knew it had to be done in order for victims to finally be able to have a voice,” said fellow and Miles College student Victoria Arrington.

The report is available at jeffersoncountymemorial.com.