Latest news with #lynching
The Guardian
4 days ago
- The Guardian
‘His blood is in the soil': the Kentucky group honoring victims of lynchings
On 26 October 1924, Fred Shannon, a Black man, was lynched at age 28 by a mob of nearly 200 masked residents in Wayland, Kentucky. Shannon, a local musician, was falsely accused of killing a white man over a financial dispute. While was he being held at a local jail, the mob broke in, took him out in the street and shot him at least 18 times. For decades, Shannon's lynching and the murders of other Black men in the region went largely unnoticed, lost to history. But over the past four years the Eastern Kentucky Remembrance Project (EKRP), an interracial, intergenerational coalition of residents, has come together to memorialize their lives – and deaths. In May, the group successfully placed a remembrance marker for Shannon. EKRP managed to find a relative of Shannon, who will visit the site within the year. Research is already underway for more markers to honor those who were lynched in eastern Kentucky, carrying on the years-long tradition. Founded in 2021, the EKRP has worked to honor Black people who were lynched in the region with plaques and other markers. The group also cleans up a Black cemetery in the area as a part of its annual Decoration Day celebration. The project was first started during a Zoom meeting for the Kentuckians for the Commonwealth Group, EKRP's parent organization. John and Jean Rosenberg, who founded the EKRP, had visited the Legacy Museum, run by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), based in Montgomery, Alabama, and learned of Shannon's lynching in Floyd county. The pair wanted to acknowledge the travesties that had taken place, according to members in the meeting. 'It's important for us to face this history,' said John in a 2021 press release about the group's founding. Five years later, Shannon's memorial service took place. On 31 May, a historical marker provided by grants from the EJI was placed outside the former Wayland jail where Shannon was killed, now a neighborhood liquor store. Dirt from the site was collected for the EJI's Community Remembrance Project, which houses soil from various lynching sites across the country. Darryl 'Dee' Parker, an EKR member, participated in the ceremony, calling it 'bittersweet' to memorialize Shannon while also recognizing the immense violence done to him. 'It was just something about touching the soil,' Parker said, who is Black. 'Just started having this little flashback, [thinking how] Fred's blood is in the soil somewhere.' Parker, like many participants in the project, have personal connections to lynching that took place in the area. During a visit to EJI, Parker learned that several of his own family members had been lynched in Kentucky. Tom Brown, a male relative, had been lynched in Nicholasville, Kentucky, after being accused of speaking to a white woman. Another family member was lynched in Midway, Kentucky; Parker's family believes that he was working at a local distillery and was accused of stealing liquor. His grandmother later confirmed the news, figuring that Parker had already known. 'Nobody really talked about this in the family. If I didn't uncover that, then that would have been lost, because I wouldn't be able to tell my kids and grandkids and so forth,' Parker said. Beverly May, member of EKR and longtime eastern Kentucky resident, also has personal ties to Shannon's killing. May, who was on the initial Zoom call that sparked EKR's creation, was 'stunned' to learn about Shannon's lynching in the region. 'I was really horrified that the lynching, something that I thought just happened in the south, happened a few miles from my house.' Wayland's own mayor hadn't known Shannon's killing was a lynching, assuming that it was punishment for murder. May soon learned she had a connection to Shannon's lynching; she discovered that her great-grandfather was sheriff of the county when Shannon's murder occurred. During a family reunion in 2022, May asked her relatives if they had heard anything about Shannon's lynching, especially as hundreds of men had participated. 'They all shook their heads and said: 'No,'' said May, who is white. 'I don't know if they told me the truth or not, but I know that there was no further discussion except, 'No, I didn't know that,'' May added. The work remains as relevant as ever, said EKR members, especially as the Trump administration continues to attack the teaching and archiving of Black history. Trump has also pledged to bring back statues commemorating Confederate leaders, many of which were successfully removed during 2020. A handful of residents in eastern Kentucky have been unsupportive of EKRP's efforts, said Parker. 'Some people in the town were like, 'What about the white man who got killed? What about this? What about that?'' he said. But the majority of people have been in favor of EKRP's mission and unaware of such violence taking place in the community. 'There's other people that didn't even know this history at all. [They were] like, 'Thank you. I'm glad you all are doing this.'' The stone marker even got a 'blessing' from the liquor store owner, a quiet man named Bobby who gave EKRP full permission to memorialize Shannon on his land, said Parker. The memorial was another form of resistance, especially as racial justice progress nationwide swings backward. 'I have been in mourning since the election,' said May. 'I am more shocked by the depth and the comprehensiveness of the move toward autocracy, blatant racism and blatant misogyny.' She added: '[But] the Trump administration has no say so about it. It's these little steps of remembrance and reconciliation are more important than ever and will continue to be.'
The Guardian
4 days ago
- The Guardian
‘His blood is in the soil': the Kentucky group honoring victims of lynchings
On 26 October 1924, Fred Shannon, a Black man, was lynched at age 28 by a mob of nearly 200 masked residents in Wayland, Kentucky. Shannon, a local musician, was falsely accused of killing a white man over a financial dispute. While was he being held at a local jail, the mob broke in, took him out in the street and shot him at least 18 times. For decades, Shannon's lynching and the murders of other Black men in the region went largely unnoticed, lost to history. But over the past four years the Eastern Kentucky Remembrance Project (EKRP), an interracial, intergenerational coalition of residents, has come together to memorialize their lives – and deaths. In May, the group successfully placed a remembrance marker for Shannon. EKRP managed to find a relative of Shannon, who will visit the site within the year. Research is already underway for more markers to honor those who were lynched in eastern Kentucky, carrying on the years-long tradition. Founded in 2021, the EKRP has worked to honor Black people who were lynched in the region with plaques and other markers. The group also cleans up a Black cemetery in the area as a part of its annual Decoration Day celebration. The project was first started during a Zoom meeting for the Kentuckians for the Commonwealth Group, EKRP's parent organization. John and Jean Rosenberg, who founded the EKRP, had visited the Legacy Museum, run by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), based in Montgomery, Alabama, and learned of Shannon's lynching in Floyd county. The pair wanted to acknowledge the travesties that had taken place, according to members in the meeting. 'It's important for us to face this history,' said John in a 2021 press release about the group's founding. Five years later, Shannon's memorial service took place. On 31 May, a historical marker provided by grants from the EJI was placed outside the former Wayland jail where Shannon was killed, now a neighborhood liquor store. Dirt from the site was collected for the EJI's Community Remembrance Project, which houses soil from various lynching sites across the country. Darryl 'Dee' Parker, an EKR member, participated in the ceremony, calling it 'bittersweet' to memorialize Shannon while also recognizing the immense violence done to him. 'It was just something about touching the soil,' Parker said, who is Black. 'Just started having this little flashback, [thinking how] Fred's blood is in the soil somewhere.' Parker, like many participants in the project, have personal connections to lynching that took place in the area. During a visit to EJI, Parker learned that several of his own family members had been lynched in Kentucky. Tom Brown, a male relative, had been lynched in Nicholasville, Kentucky, after being accused of speaking to a white woman. Another family member was lynched in Midway, Kentucky; Parker's family believes that he was working at a local distillery and was accused of stealing liquor. His grandmother later confirmed the news, figuring that Parker had already known. 'Nobody really talked about this in the family. If I didn't uncover that, then that would have been lost, because I wouldn't be able to tell my kids and grandkids and so forth,' Parker said. Beverly May, member of EKR and longtime eastern Kentucky resident, also has personal ties to Shannon's killing. May, who was on the initial Zoom call that sparked EKR's creation, was 'stunned' to learn about Shannon's lynching in the region. 'I was really horrified that the lynching, something that I thought just happened in the south, happened a few miles from my house.' Wayland's own mayor hadn't known Shannon's killing was a lynching, assuming that it was punishment for murder. May soon learned she had a connection to Shannon's lynching; she discovered that her great-grandfather was sheriff of the county when Shannon's murder occurred. During a family reunion in 2022, May asked her relatives if they had heard anything about Shannon's lynching, especially as hundreds of men had participated. 'They all shook their heads and said: 'No,'' said May, who is white. 'I don't know if they told me the truth or not, but I know that there was no further discussion except, 'No, I didn't know that,'' May added. The work remains as relevant as ever, said EKR members, especially as the Trump administration continues to attack the teaching and archiving of Black history. Trump has also pledged to bring back statues commemorating Confederate leaders, many of which were successfully removed during 2020. A handful of residents in eastern Kentucky have been unsupportive of EKRP's efforts, said Parker. 'Some people in the town were like, 'What about the white man who got killed? What about this? What about that?'' he said. But the majority of people have been in favor of EKRP's mission and unaware of such violence taking place in the community. 'There's other people that didn't even know this history at all. [They were] like, 'Thank you. I'm glad you all are doing this.'' The stone marker even got a 'blessing' from the liquor store owner, a quiet man named Bobby who gave EKRP full permission to memorialize Shannon on his land, said Parker. The memorial was another form of resistance, especially as racial justice progress nationwide swings backward. 'I have been in mourning since the election,' said May. 'I am more shocked by the depth and the comprehensiveness of the move toward autocracy, blatant racism and blatant misogyny.' She added: '[But] the Trump administration has no say so about it. It's these little steps of remembrance and reconciliation are more important than ever and will continue to be.'
The Guardian
04-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
He's been hanged, stabbed and cut in galleries – now artist Carlos Martiel is being buried alive
In 2022 in a Los Angeles gallery, Carlos Martiel placed a noose around his neck and suspended his nude body from a rope tied to the ceiling. The piece was titled Cuerpo, Spanish for 'body', and the photographs and footage alone are shocking, mournful and distressing, as volunteers take turns holding his body aloft to prevent the real risk of asphyxiation. In conceiving the work, the Cuba-born, New York-based Afro-Latinx artist viewed hundreds of photographs of public lynchings from across the US – a brutal history of normalised extrajudicial violence that has moved artists from Billie Holiday to film-maker Steve McQueen. Those lynchings were also a kind of public performance: of terror, dehumanisation and white supremacy. 'I couldn't put into words everything I thought and felt during the development of the work; it was a very profound and intense experience for me,' Martiel says, over email. 'When I was finally taken down and went into the gallery director's office to rest, I cried inconsolably for about 20 minutes. That had never happened to me before.' In June, Martiel will present the video of his Cuerpo performance at Dark Mofo festival in lutruwita/Tasmania. He'll also premiere a new live performance titled Custody, which reflects on 'police brutality, incarceration, and death of racialised bodies' globally, including within First Nations communities in Australia. For two hours, Martiel will stand naked and restrained in a large hourglass structure in Hobart's City Hall, as sand rises to subsume and compress his body. For many years, Martiel's flesh and blood has been his means of expression. For 2009's Marea, he was buried up to his neck on a Havana beach as he waited for the tide to rise; in 2010's Espíritus acuartelados, he struggled to free himself from under the combat-booted foot of another performer. For 2017's Continente, he had nine small diamonds embedded in his skin and then lay in a New York gallery while a white man cut them out. While many of his works are documented in photography and video, he believes that there are some things that can only be expressed through live performance, that the empathetic nature of performance unlocks something between audience and artist that a sculpture or painting can't. The content of his work, he says, is informed by 'the contradictions and nonconformities that living in the Cuban context generated in me'. Born in Havana in 1989, in a time of economic crisis and social upheaval at the tail end of the cold war, Martiel witnessed the intersecting realities of race, inequality, homophobia and government repression from a young age. 'Ideas become clear for anyone under that breeding ground,' he says. Art became 'an escape route, a refuge, a firearm, and a means to express myself freely in that scenario'. Martiel developed his particular brand of art while studying goldsmithing at Havana's Academy of Fine Arts, when he started making drawings using a dilution of blood, iron oxide, vinegar and charcoal. 'Clandestinely, I had to go to public clinics and ask the nurses to take my blood to use it as paint later,' he says. 'At first, they helped me in the process, but given how often I went, they stopped doing it, which frustrated me.' He cut out the intermediary, and started exposing his body to physical and psychological extremes, influenced by Cuban and Cuban American artists such as Tania Bruguera and Coco Fusco, as well as Marina Abramović, Regina Galindo, Paulo Nazareth and Ayrson Heráclito. Initially, lacking money or access to Havana's conventional art spaces, Martiel started out by mounting public performances and interventions. But as his profile grew, he was invited into some of the art world's most prestigious spaces. In 2021, as part of his Monument series, he stood naked with his hands cuffed behind his back in the middle of the Guggenheim Museum's iconic white rotunda. While his body of work is steeped in the context of his home country of Cuba and his adopted home of the US, the questions he addresses are, sadly, transnational. Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion 'In all the places I've visited, I always find a colonial past conditioning the present, where the same bodies are oppressed,' he says. 'I'm referring to the less fortunate human groups who have been and continue to be the victims of capitalism, colonialism, fascism, and racism.' In conceiving his new performance for Dark Mofo, he was mindful of Australia's 'necropolitics' and history of violence. While developing Custody, Martiel was in touch with Caleb Nichols-Mansell, a Tasmanian Aboriginal artist and cultural adviser for Dark Mofo, who he says 'shared a lot of information with me about the story and specifically about the situation First Nations people face there regarding deaths in police custody. That conversation greatly influenced how I approached the issue.' While Martiel's work is often confronting, he isn't driven by shock value or merely replicating the trauma and subjection inflicted on marginalised bodies. 'The topics I address are painful … but I never fall into the aesthetics of shock or gratuitous pain,' he says. 'The elegance of visual language and the transmission of knowledge through art have always been vital to me.' And while many of his works have referenced past and historical traumas, his work is as much a response to the present. 'It's sad to look back on the past, but even more heartbreaking to observe the present and see everything we're witnessing daily,' he says, invoking Trump's America, Ukraine and Palestine. 'If this isn't colonialism at its finest, I don't know what is. Every day, I believe less in justice; all I have left is the consolation of poetic justice, which I allow myself to profess through art, my main avenue of expression, struggle, and resistance.' For Martiel, it means his experience in that Los Angeles gallery in 2022 has only deepened in meaning. 'With all that we see daily in the world, I think it encompasses many more meanings than I felt at its execution. Maybe it is wrong for me to say it, but I think it makes more sense every day that passes.' As part of Dark Mofo festival, Carlos Martiel's video Cuerpo will be exhibited at The Old Bank, Hobart, from 5-8 June and 12-15 June; the artist will perform Custody from 7.30-9.30pm on Saturday 14 June at City Hall
CNN
25-05-2025
- CNN
A Black 18-year-old college student was lynched on a playground 95 years ago. His nephew just accepted his posthumous degree
Student life Crime Race & ethnicityFacebookTweetLink Follow As Imam Plemon El-Amin stood on stage at Morehouse College in front of hundreds of people, donning graduation regalia his uncle Dennis Hubert never got to wear, all he could think was that Hubert would never be forgotten – even 95 years after he was killed. Hubert, an 18-year-old African American divinity student at Morehouse College, was lynched in June 1930 by a mob of seven White men on the playground of a segregated Atlanta school. Last Sunday, the historically Black all-male college where Hubert was a rising sophomore awarded him a posthumous Bachelor of Arts degree in religion. At the commencement ceremony, Morehouse President David Thomas called Hubert a 'son of Morehouse, a martyr of justice, and what history now sees as the Trayvon Martin of the 1930s in Atlanta.' El-Amin, who never met Hubert, says the moment reminded him of an Islamic saying: There are three things a person leaves behind after their death – their charity, knowledge and family members who pray for them. 'Many prayers were said in his name,' El-Amin said about the ceremony, where the 75-year-old accepted the posthumous degree on his uncle's behalf. 'Many people remembered him and were informed about his life and his legacy, and so the knowledge was there, as well as the charity of him sacrificing his life so that we would be more conscious of the value of young life and the value of human life, but also the value of justice.' El-Amin's family has had 'a long tradition' of a 'connection with Morehouse,' he said, with multiple generations graduating from the institution. Ten men in his family graduated from Morehouse and seven women graduated from its sister school, Spelman College. 'I was proud of Morehouse to give Dennis the honor, and I'm quite appreciative,' El-Amin said. 'The whole Hubert family is really appreciative of that.' Hubert's family had well-established roots in the community: his father was a prominent preacher and his mother was the principal of the elementary school where Hubert was killed, according to El-Amin. 'For one of their promising children, who (was) a rising sophomore at the Morehouse College to be murdered just in cold blood … at that time, 1930, is saying that there (were) no human rights given to the people of Georgia,' El-Amin said. Hubert was one of at least 38 lynching victims killed in Fulton County between 1877 and 1950, according to the Equal Justice Initiative. In Georgia, nearly 600 African Americans were lynched in that period – the second highest number of lynchings in any state. 'When we begin to address this history, when we begin to try to create remedies for the harm and suffering that terror violence and lynching violence created, I think we lay a path down that will help us move forward, which is why I was so pleased that Morehouse decided to award a degree posthumously to Dennis Hubert,' said Bryan Stevenson, the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. Like many lynching victims, Hubert was a young man with a bright future ahead of him. When he was killed, the student had been the driver for John Hope, the first Black president of Morehouse. 'This is a recognition of Dennis as not only a human being, but also as someone that had made his mark and was beginning to make his mark at Morehouse, and was not able to make his full mark here in the city or in life, but that people have a high regard for him,' El-Amin said. Less than 15 minutes after Hubert arrived at the Crogman School for Negroes that fateful evening on June 15, 1930, several White men attacked Hubert, falsely accusing him of insulting a White woman. 'What do you want of me? I have done nothing,' Hubert told the mob before one of the men shot him point-blank in the back of the head in front of two dozen witnesses. Hubert's killing sent shockwaves across the community, and the men were soon indicted in connection with his killing – accountability that was rare during that period, according to the Fulton County Remembrance Coalition. The defense argued the killing was 'justifiable homicide' because of the alleged insult. 'The African American community was pushing for justice, and they did get some things that were first in terms of justice between Black and White folk,' El-Amin said. Two days after the men were denied bail, the home of Dennis Hubert's father, Rev. G. J. Hubert, was burned to the ground, according to the coalition. When a Black Baptist church held a fundraiser to rebuild the home and support prosecution of the men, a White mob bombed it with tear gas. Days later, Dennis Hubert's cousin, Rev. Charles R. Hubert, escaped an attempt on his life, and the Spelman College chapel was attacked, according to the coalition. The men were acquitted of murder charges, and only two were convicted of lesser offenses, according to the coalition. One man received a sentence of 12 to 15 years for voluntary manslaughter, while another who confessed to firing the fatal shot received a sentence of just two years. El-Amin's mother, who was 12 when her brother was killed, scarcely spoke about Hubert because of the pain his loss had wrought. 'He was probably her protector and her person that she looked up to,' El-Amin said. But when she grew older and El-Amin became her caretaker, his mother would often call him 'Dennis,' which was 'quite moving' for El-Amin. Though Hubert died 20 years before his nephew was born, the tragedy scarred the family for generations. Growing up as the only son in his family, El-Amin said his mother worried about him because she couldn't bear to lose another family member. Other family members moved out of Atlanta to escape the trauma. They were among more than six million Black people who fled the South to escape racial terrorism between 1916 and 1970, according to the coalition. While Hubert's death traumatized El-Amin's family, he says he's comforted by his faith. 'Life doesn't stop with death and … God rewards those who are oppressed and those who are unjustly murdered,' he said. Part of the tragedy of Hubert's lynching was a lack of awareness surrounding his story among Morehouse graduates until only recently, several alumni said. Michael Tyler, a 1977 Morehouse graduate, said he doesn't 'believe that any of my classmates, or anybody during our generation, was aware of what had transpired with Dennis Hubert.' A few years ago, Tyler learned of Hubert's story when he visited an exhibit memorializing him at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. Sean Jones, a 1998 graduate who serves as president of the Atlanta branch of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, discovered that piece of his school's history in 2021, then called for a discussion of it at the next alumni meeting. As a board member of the Fulton County Remembrance Coalition, Jones constantly advocated for the college to formally recognize Hubert and educate both students and alumni about his story. 'It's personal, it's painful, and … oftentimes it's a scary thing, because some persons have nightmares about it once they hear this kind of history,' Jones said. 'But it is something that must be discussed, must be highlighted.' The lack of awareness about the tragedy – even among Morehouse graduates – made the college's tribute that much more meaningful, Tyler and Jones said. 'It was extraordinarily significant and compelling, and something that I am exceedingly proud of my alma mater for doing – telling a story that had not been told in the public domain as it needed to be,' Tyler said. With the long-overdue recognition, '(Hubert's) memory will continue to inspire a new generation of Morehouse Men to serve with courage, speak truth to power, and uphold the ideals of equity and moral leadership in their respective callings,' a Morehouse College spokesperson said in a statement. Morehouse had approached El-Amin about the decision to award Hubert a degree a year and a half ago and initially planned to recognize Hubert last year, he said. Morehouse's faculty and students had nominated Hubert for the honorary degree, according to the college president. 'We remember the son who should have become a man here. We remember the voice that would have preached liberation. We remember the dreamer who was never given the chance to dream aloud,' Thomas said at the ceremony. El-Amin believes the school's decision to honor Dennis was influenced by the work of the Fulton County Remembrance Coalition and the Equal Justice Initiative to memorialize Hubert along with other lynching victims. The organizations in 2021 collected soil from the site of Hubert's killing – now the Crogman School Lofts apartment complex – and placed a marker there in his honor in 2022. A group of Morehouse students who attended the 2022 commemoration joined hands, encircled the memorial marker and sang the 'Dear Old Morehouse' hymn in Hubert's honor, Tyler recalled. 'Ninety-five years later, people are conscious of his life, which means he's still alive, though not here with us physically or in body, but his life, his will, and he is providing inspiration for those of us left behind,' El-Amin said. Such memorials may help educate future generations and prevent the return of past injustices, community members said. They're especially important today 'when there's such a hostility in some spaces to learning the history of struggle and violence against Black people,' Stevenson, of the Equal Justice Initiative, said. 'We can see that those very, very terrible times are not that far away and can easily come back,' El-Amin said.
CNN
25-05-2025
- CNN
A Black 18-year-old college student was lynched on a playground 95 years ago. His nephew just accepted his posthumous degree
As Imam Plemon El-Amin stood on stage at Morehouse College in front of hundreds of people, donning graduation regalia his uncle Dennis Hubert never got to wear, all he could think was that Hubert would never be forgotten – even 95 years after he was killed. Hubert, an 18-year-old African American divinity student at Morehouse College, was lynched in June 1930 by a mob of seven White men on the playground of a segregated Atlanta school. Last Sunday, the historically Black all-male college where Hubert was a rising sophomore awarded him a posthumous Bachelor of Arts degree in religion. At the commencement ceremony, Morehouse President David Thomas called Hubert a 'son of Morehouse, a martyr of justice, and what history now sees as the Trayvon Martin of the 1930s in Atlanta.' El-Amin, who never met Hubert, says the moment reminded him of an Islamic saying: There are three things a person leaves behind after their death – their charity, knowledge and family members who pray for them. 'Many prayers were said in his name,' El-Amin said about the ceremony, where the 75-year-old accepted the posthumous degree on his uncle's behalf. 'Many people remembered him and were informed about his life and his legacy, and so the knowledge was there, as well as the charity of him sacrificing his life so that we would be more conscious of the value of young life and the value of human life, but also the value of justice.' El-Amin's family has had 'a long tradition' of a 'connection with Morehouse,' he said, with multiple generations graduating from the institution. Ten men in his family graduated from Morehouse and seven women graduated from its sister school, Spelman College. 'I was proud of Morehouse to give Dennis the honor, and I'm quite appreciative,' El-Amin said. 'The whole Hubert family is really appreciative of that.' Hubert's family had well-established roots in the community: his father was a prominent preacher and his mother was the principal of the elementary school where Hubert was killed, according to El-Amin. 'For one of their promising children, who (was) a rising sophomore at the Morehouse College to be murdered just in cold blood … at that time, 1930, is saying that there (were) no human rights given to the people of Georgia,' El-Amin said. Hubert was one of at least 38 lynching victims killed in Fulton County between 1877 and 1950, according to the Equal Justice Initiative. In Georgia, nearly 600 African Americans were lynched in that period – the second highest number of lynchings in any state. 'When we begin to address this history, when we begin to try to create remedies for the harm and suffering that terror violence and lynching violence created, I think we lay a path down that will help us move forward, which is why I was so pleased that Morehouse decided to award a degree posthumously to Dennis Hubert,' said Bryan Stevenson, the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. Like many lynching victims, Hubert was a young man with a bright future ahead of him. When he was killed, the student had been the driver for John Hope, the first Black president of Morehouse. 'This is a recognition of Dennis as not only a human being, but also as someone that had made his mark and was beginning to make his mark at Morehouse, and was not able to make his full mark here in the city or in life, but that people have a high regard for him,' El-Amin said. Less than 15 minutes after Hubert arrived at the Crogman School for Negroes that fateful evening on June 15, 1930, several White men attacked Hubert, falsely accusing him of insulting a White woman. 'What do you want of me? I have done nothing,' Hubert told the mob before one of the men shot him point-blank in the back of the head in front of two dozen witnesses. Hubert's killing sent shockwaves across the community, and the men were soon indicted in connection with his killing – accountability that was rare during that period, according to the Fulton County Remembrance Coalition. The defense argued the killing was 'justifiable homicide' because of the alleged insult. 'The African American community was pushing for justice, and they did get some things that were first in terms of justice between Black and White folk,' El-Amin said. Two days after the men were denied bail, the home of Dennis Hubert's father, Rev. G. J. Hubert, was burned to the ground, according to the coalition. When a Black Baptist church held a fundraiser to rebuild the home and support prosecution of the men, a White mob bombed it with tear gas. Days later, Dennis Hubert's cousin, Rev. Charles R. Hubert, escaped an attempt on his life, and the Spelman College chapel was attacked, according to the coalition. The men were acquitted of murder charges, and only two were convicted of lesser offenses, according to the coalition. One man received a sentence of 12 to 15 years for voluntary manslaughter, while another who confessed to firing the fatal shot received a sentence of just two years. El-Amin's mother, who was 12 when her brother was killed, scarcely spoke about Hubert because of the pain his loss had wrought. 'He was probably her protector and her person that she looked up to,' El-Amin said. But when she grew older and El-Amin became her caretaker, his mother would often call him 'Dennis,' which was 'quite moving' for El-Amin. Though Hubert died 20 years before his nephew was born, the tragedy scarred the family for generations. Growing up as the only son in his family, El-Amin said his mother worried about him because she couldn't bear to lose another family member. Other family members moved out of Atlanta to escape the trauma. They were among more than six million Black people who fled the South to escape racial terrorism between 1916 and 1970, according to the coalition. While Hubert's death traumatized El-Amin's family, he says he's comforted by his faith. 'Life doesn't stop with death and … God rewards those who are oppressed and those who are unjustly murdered,' he said. Part of the tragedy of Hubert's lynching was a lack of awareness surrounding his story among Morehouse graduates until only recently, several alumni said. Michael Tyler, a 1977 Morehouse graduate, said he doesn't 'believe that any of my classmates, or anybody during our generation, was aware of what had transpired with Dennis Hubert.' A few years ago, Tyler learned of Hubert's story when he visited an exhibit memorializing him at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. Sean Jones, a 1998 graduate who serves as president of the Atlanta branch of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, discovered that piece of his school's history in 2021, then called for a discussion of it at the next alumni meeting. As a board member of the Fulton County Remembrance Coalition, Jones constantly advocated for the college to formally recognize Hubert and educate both students and alumni about his story. 'It's personal, it's painful, and … oftentimes it's a scary thing, because some persons have nightmares about it once they hear this kind of history,' Jones said. 'But it is something that must be discussed, must be highlighted.' The lack of awareness about the tragedy – even among Morehouse graduates – made the college's tribute that much more meaningful, Tyler and Jones said. 'It was extraordinarily significant and compelling, and something that I am exceedingly proud of my alma mater for doing – telling a story that had not been told in the public domain as it needed to be,' Tyler said. With the long-overdue recognition, '(Hubert's) memory will continue to inspire a new generation of Morehouse Men to serve with courage, speak truth to power, and uphold the ideals of equity and moral leadership in their respective callings,' a Morehouse College spokesperson said in a statement. Morehouse had approached El-Amin about the decision to award Hubert a degree a year and a half ago and initially planned to recognize Hubert last year, he said. Morehouse's faculty and students had nominated Hubert for the honorary degree, according to the college president. 'We remember the son who should have become a man here. We remember the voice that would have preached liberation. We remember the dreamer who was never given the chance to dream aloud,' Thomas said at the ceremony. El-Amin believes the school's decision to honor Dennis was influenced by the work of the Fulton County Remembrance Coalition and the Equal Justice Initiative to memorialize Hubert along with other lynching victims. The organizations in 2021 collected soil from the site of Hubert's killing – now the Crogman School Lofts apartment complex – and placed a marker there in his honor in 2022. A group of Morehouse students who attended the 2022 commemoration joined hands, encircled the memorial marker and sang the 'Dear Old Morehouse' hymn in Hubert's honor, Tyler recalled. 'Ninety-five years later, people are conscious of his life, which means he's still alive, though not here with us physically or in body, but his life, his will, and he is providing inspiration for those of us left behind,' El-Amin said. Such memorials may help educate future generations and prevent the return of past injustices, community members said. They're especially important today 'when there's such a hostility in some spaces to learning the history of struggle and violence against Black people,' Stevenson, of the Equal Justice Initiative, said. 'We can see that those very, very terrible times are not that far away and can easily come back,' El-Amin said.
