This event will honor lynching victims G. Smith Watkins, Ed Bracy and Jim Press Meriweather who were lynched for starting a Lowndes County sharecropper's union.
The Unveiling and Dedication of a historic marker for Theo Calloway will be Sunday, April 26, 2020 at the historic Hayneville Courthouse at 3 pm. The executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), Bryan Stevenson will be the dedicatory speaker. Mr. Calloway was actually lynched on the courthouse grounds in 1888.
This is also a Bicentennial Celebratory Event and is sponsored by the Lowndes County Community Remembrance Coalition which is chaired by president and vice president of the Lowndes County Friends of the Civil Rights Movement (LCFCRM), Arthur Nelson and Katanga Mants respectively. This coalition was organized by The Elmore Bolling Foundation which received the Town of Hayneville’s Bicentennial grant with endorsement resolutions from Hayneville’s Mayor David Daniel, Hayneville Town Council and the Lowndes County Commission.
Jo McCall and the Lowndes County Community Remembrance Coalition led a group on a tour in Lowndes County to collect soil samples from sites associated with lynchings. The soil collection was done in conjunction with the Equal Justice Initiative.
The Town of Hayneville Update
The Lowndes County Cenotaph Retrieval Committee
The Elmore Bolling Foundation