Gainesville in Alachua County, Florida — The American South (South Atlantic)
Lynching in America ⎯⎯⎯ Reconstruction-Era Lynchings in Gainesville
Community Remembrance Project
Photographed by Tim Fillmon, November 18, 2021
1. Lynching in America side of Marker
Inscription.
Lynching in America
After the Civil War, constitutional rights were granted to Black people ensuring equal protection and voting. Many white leaders responded to the emancipation of Black people by violently seeking to maintain racial, economic, and social control over Black residents. By ceding political control back to Confederate veterans, federal officials allowed white southerners opposed to racial equality to re-establish white supremacy through intimidation and violence. Thousands of Black men, women, and children were lynched during Reconstruction, with dozens of large-scale massacres of Black communities between 1865 and 1876. This terror persisted after Reconstruction, largely with impunity. Lynchings of Black people included burnings and mutilation, sometimes in front of crowds numbering in the thousands. Lynch mobs would often seize their victims from jails, courtrooms, or from police, without fear of any legal repercussions. Many names of those whose lives were claimed by these acts of racially motivated violence were not recorded and will never be known, but at least 6,500 racial terror lynchings were documented
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in the United States between 1865 and 1950. Florida had one of the highest per capita lynching rates in the nation with at least 343 documented victims lynched and at least 12 Black people lynched in Gainesville. This marker honors the victims of this tragic racial terror violence in our community.
Reconstruction-Era Lynchings in Gainesville
The era of Reconstruction following the Civil War opened with great promise in Gainesville but soon gave way to racial terror, unparalleled violence, and racial oppression. White mobs lynched at least eight Black people during this period: Harry Franklin 1868; Mr. Stephens 1868; an Unnamed Person 1870; Christopher Cummings 1870; Henry Washington 1871; Alexander Morris 1871; Sandy Hacock 1871 and Eli in 1874. After Emancipation, Black people made up a majority of the population in Gainesville and opened businesses, churches, and organized political engagement. They advocated for public education, land ownership, and the right to vote. White people hoping to maintain the racial hierarchy that existed during enslavement attacked and lynched Black people for asserting their rights, leaving plantations,
Photographed by Tim Fillmon, November 18, 2021
2. Reconstruction-Era Lynchings in Gainesville side of marker
participating in politics, working toward economic independence, violating white social customs, being accused of crimes, or for sheer racial terror that was random and arbitrary. In 1874, a white mob set fire to the local jail to lynch a black man named Eli by burning him to death. This type of violence was accommodated by courts, law enforcement, and white officials who removed African Americans from juries, seized Black-owned land, and suppressed Black voting rights, while ignoring or even supporting white mobs who terrorized Black communities. Racial violence continued to terrorize the Black community for decades.
Erected 2021 by Alachua County Community Remembrance Project - Equal Justice Initiative.
Location. 29° 39.089′ N, 82° 19.485′ W. Marker is in Gainesville, Florida, in Alachua County. It is on South Main Street (Florida Route 329) just south of East University Avenue
Photographed by Tim Fillmon, November 18, 2021
3. Reconstruction-Era Lynchings in Gainesville/Lynching in America Marker
( Route 24/26), on the right when traveling north. Touch for map. Marker is at or near this postal address: 10 S Main St, Gainesville FL 32601, United States of America. Touch for directions.
Regionally, this marker is in North Florida. It is also in the American South. Globally, it is in the North Atlantic Region, North America, a Gulf of Mexico state, the Western Hemisphere, the Western World, and the Anglosphere. Historically, it finds itself in what was once New Spain, the territory of the Mississippian Culture, one of the Confederate States of America, and the Antebellum South.
Another marker is no longer nearby. Confederate Soldier Memorial (was a few steps from this marker but has been permanently removed).
Also see . . . Marker Dedication. (Submitted on November 22, 2021, by Tim Fillmon of Webster, Florida.)
Credits. This page was last revised on November 22, 2021. It was originally submitted on November 21, 2021, by Tim Fillmon of Webster, Florida. This page has been viewed 939 times since then and 83 times this year. Photos:1, 2, 3. submitted on November 21, 2021, by Tim Fillmon of Webster, Florida.
