The Statesboro-Bulloch Remembrance Coalition has asked Statesboro’s mayor and council for permission to  erect  a marker next to City Hall memorializing the known victims of lynching in Bulloch County.

A proposed easement, providing for the coalition to maintain the marker on city property but promising that the marker will not be moved or altered without  the coalition’s consent, was on the agenda  for  a possible vote during the 5:30 p.m.  Tuesday, Feb. 21, regular City Council meeting. The packet of meeting materials also included the coalition’s request letter, dated Feb. 15, and the proposed text of the marker.

In a memo also dated Feb. 15, Assistant City Manager Jason Boyles noted that he met with Remembrance Coalition members Adrianne McCollar and Dr.  Patrick Novotny in July 2022 “to discuss the Coalition’s  work  to memorialize local  victims  of  racial  violence and to foster meaningful dialogue about race  and justice today.”

Adrianne McCollar, who is Mayor Jonathan McCollar’s wife, and Novotny, a Georgia Southern University political science professor, are the current co-chairs of  the Statesboro-Bulloch Remembrance Coalition. Only the name of the coalition, over its steering committee’s webpage address, appears on the signature line of the request letter to the mayor and council members.

“We, the members of the steering committee of the Statesboro-Bulloch Remembrance Coalition, thank you for your efforts to promote dialogue and understanding across areas of difference, such as establishing the One Boro Commission,” the letter begins. “We write today  in a similar vein, to request permission to install  a marker in space adjacent to the front sidewalk of City Hall memorializing the nine known victims of lynching  in Bulloch County.”

The local group has modeled its plan on the national Community Remembrance Project, launched by the Equal Justice Initiative, or EJI. Statesboro and Bulloch County residents who had made independent visits to the EJI’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, started meeting as the Remembrance Coalition 2019.

They met quietly at first and then were delayed in their planning and meeting opportunities by the COVID-19 pandemic.

But on the evening of Jan. 4, 2023, the coalition held its first public event, “Bulloch Bears Witness: Music, Memory and Moving Forward.” About 100 people attended it in the Carter Recital Hall on the Georgia Southern campus. Early in the program, Ms. McCollar intoned the names of eight people of color who were lynched – savagely killed by groups, sometimes crowds of 100 or more, white people – in Bulloch County from 1886 through 1911 as verified by EJI researchers. They also listed one local lynching victim from August 1904 as “unknown.”

In addition to the marker placement, the Remembrance Coalition has proposed holding an essay contest for students in public schools, planning youth trips to EJI’s museum and memorial in Montgomery, and collecting soil from known local lynching sites to be placed in a memorial container.

Where at City Hall?

Boyles, in his memo, noted that the suggested marker location is “adjacent to City Hall, perhaps on the east side since there is another historical marker on the west side of City Hall,” and  said he agreed this  would be a suitable  location.

The existing historical marker by the west end of City Hall’s front porch memorializes an event of a very different character. Furnished by the Bulloch County Historical Society, the “Fabulous Fifty of 1906” marker recalls the Statesboro-Savannah round trip of Dec. 1-2, 1906, by a delegation who made a successful effort to bring the First District Agricultural and Mechanical School to Bulloch County. First District A&M grew and evolved over decades to become Georgia Southern University.

Originally beside the Willie McTell Trail, this marker was moved in 2020 to stand in view of the Fabulous Fifty mural the Historical Society had professional muralists paint on the east-facing wall of a neighboring building.

Terror in 1904

But the worst period for lynchings in Bulloch County preceded the celebrated 1906 event by just over two years. The Statesboro-Bulloch Remembrance Coalition has not called attention to this in its letter or in the lynching marker text. In fact, the draft of the lynching memorial text does not mention City Hall.

However, the coalition in its letter to city officials did note tragic associations of the building that is now City Hall by way of indicating its historical relevance as the proposed marker site.

One paragraph of the letter states: “The historic Jaeckel Hotel which now serves as City Hall has deep connections to the history of racial violence in Bulloch County. As one example, out-of-town journalists stayed at the hotel during the peak period of lynchings in August 1904. During this period, the Jaeckel served as an unofficial community hub for news about these acts of racial terror.”

“… Only through an accurate and thorough telling of our shared history can true healing begin,” the letter concludes.

Marker details

The Equal Justice Initiative would pay for the marker and its shipment to Statesboro, with the local coalition expecting to install it “with no out-of-pocket expense to the city,” the letter states. Described in an EJI flyer as 42 inches wide and 38.5 inches high on seven-foot octagonal aluminum posts, the markers are similar in form to those installed by the Historical Society and state organizations.

However, the background color for the gold lettering is blue, and the Community Remembrance Project emblem will appear at the top. Headed “Lynching in Bulloch County,” the proposed text would fill both sides, continuing from one side to the other.

“Between 1886 and 1911, racial terror lynchings of African-Americans in Bulloch County created a legacy of fear and violence. Lynchings of Jake Braswell in 1886, Kennedy Gordon in 1901, Thompson Gilbert in 1908, and Marion Chance in 1911 all took place after alleged assaults in Bulloch County, with no reports of law enforcement investigations or coroner inquests to hold accountable any of those taking part in these lynchings. …,” the text begins in the draft given City Council.

“August 1904's racial violence in Statesboro and Bulloch County is the most infamous and worst moment of lawlessness and terror of African-Americans in the county's history. The lynchings of Will Cato and Paul Reed made headlines nationally …,” the second paragraph begins.

Two paragraphs are devoted to the lynchings of Cato and Reed, who are mentioned again in the fourth and final paragraph. It then notes the lynchings of Albert Roberts of Register and Sebastian McBride of Portal, the former the same evening as the Cato and Reeding lynchings and the latter within days, as “mostly forgotten tragedies of a time of senseless violence.”

City’s 3:30 work session

Besides being a potential action item on the 5:30 p.m. Tuesday agenda, a “historical marker for Statesboro” was the last of six topics listed for the mayor and council’s 3:30 p.m. Tuesday work session, also open to the public.

Other topics were a Convention and Visitors Bureau presentation on the hotel-motel tax, the annual public safety reports of the Fire Department and Police Department, a revisiting of the annexation procedure and the 2022 audit report and quarterly financial report.