Tag: lynching

Near a 1906 statue of a Confederate soldier, a lynching marker will soon rise in downtown Statesville with a message of reconciliation and healing.

The roadside state historical marker will commemorate how Black people and white people, including the mayor, other elected officials and religious and business leaders, gathered to prevent further violence after the 1883 lynching of Charles Campbell, who was Black.

The gathering called for the arrest of members of a mob of 40 to 70 white people who pulled Campbell from a cell in a former downtown Statesville jail and hung him from a nearby bridge, historical accounts show.

Campbell was accused of killing a white man with whom he’d previously feuded in his home county of Alexander. The men encountered each other and fought again during a circus that attracted 10,000 people to Statesville, tripling its population.

No one was arrested in Campbell’s killing, but thanks to the community effort, no further violence occurred, according to period newspaper accounts.

In a split vote, with Mayor Costi Kutteh breaking the tie, Statesville City Council Monday night voted to support the marker by directing its street maintenance department to work with the N.C. Department of Transportation on its placement along Center Street.

The vote culminated a three-year effort by longtime Statesville businessman Frank Johnson and other founding members of the Iredell County Remembrance Project, a subcommittee of the Statesville Branch of the NAACP.

Johnson told The Charlotte Observer he came up with the marker idea after visiting The Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Ala., in 2022 with his wife, Linda, and two of their grandchildren. The museum “offers a powerful, immersive journey through America’s history of racial injustice,” according to its website.

The marker will lend a different and far more accurate impression of Statesville to visitors on its main street, Johnson said. Restaurants, antique stores and other businesses line South Center Street near the statue.

The effort also began after Statesville saw years of protests calling for the removal of the statue. Iredell County commissioners voted in 2021 to remove the statue outside the Old County Courthouse. The building houses county government offices.

A Superior Court judge, however, ruled in 2022 against a lawsuit that sought to remove a statue of a Confederate soldier in Alamance County. In March 2024, the N.C. Court of Appeals ruled that a 2015 law passed by the legislature, known as the Monument Protection Law, prevented the statue from being removed.

Johnson said he and his wife “put up some seed money so that there would be no immediate financial needs, and we went to work. The research was fascinating. There were four lynchings in Iredell County, and the process dictated we concentrate on just one of those.

“The remainder of our seed money — $2,500 — will be for an essay contest” in conjunction with America’s 250th anniversary celebration, he said.

The marker will cost the city and taxpayers nothing, he said.

“How Statesville comes together in a crisis”

Before Monday’s vote, Johnson urged council members to support the marker.

“Some of you may think that this is past and does not need to be memorialized,” Johnson, who is white and a former member of the North Carolina Board of Transportation, told the City Council. “After all, this is an old story. We have had a Black president. There are equal rights now. We don’t need to be reminding people of past unpleasantness.

“Once again, the marker is to highlight how Statesville comes together in a crisis,” he said. “Your approval will carry that forward. This counter pose to the statue is appropriate and necessary to show that Statesville is still a right-thinking place. We know who we are today and can be proud of it.”

Project member Marlene Scott, who is Black, invited City Council members to “celebrate the vision of freedom, the gathering of voices … truth telling, healing and reconciliation and harmony” by approving the marker.

Several council members voted against the marker Monday night because they said its wording is unknown. Final wording will be determined by the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala. The North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources turns to that group whenever a lynching is going to be mentioned on a historical marker, Johnson said.

Johnson told the Observer that he contacted the Equal Justice Initiative “and collected all the info we needed” for getting a marker approved. “We formed the ICRP, we researched, we coordinated with Todd Scott at the Statesville NAACP, and his wife, Marlene, agreed to chair our group after their board approved the committee,” he said.

Republican Statesville City Council member Steve Johnson, no relation to Frank Johnson, said he was concerned that a primary financial backer of the Equal Justice Initiative is the Open Society Foundations – a collection of grant-making organizations founded by multibillionaire and Democratic Party mega-donor George Soros.

“That ought to give anybody reason to be skeptical about the Equal Justice Initiative,” Steve Johnson, who is white, said at Monday’s meeting. “Show me what the marker is going to say, and then I’ll vote.”

“For future generations”

Council member Doris Allison, who is Black, gave an impassioned plea for the marker.

“We could have had a riot, but it did not happen,” Allison said about the 1883 gathering of Blacks and whites. “We want our future generations to know that whatever happened, we have overcome, and there’s a part for everybody.”

“It saved Statesville from becoming another Ellenton, S.C.,” Frank Johnson said, referring to the killing of up to 100 Black people in an 1876 riot, or what many called a massacre, in the former town that Johnson said is now “a radiation dump.” It’s where the federal government in the 1950s located its nuclear materials Savannah River Site.