Congressman Cohen Highlights Importance of Acknowledging Lynchings in a Public Comment to the National Park Service

MEMPHIS - In 2022, President Biden signed into law the Evaluating Lynching Locations (or ELL) for National Park Sites Act, named in part in memory of Ell Persons, lynched by a Memphis mob in 1917. The legislation Congressman Cohen introduced calls upon the National Park Service (NPS) to evaluate the presumed historic sites of lynchings in the South within 100 miles of Memphis with the purpose of designating them as national historic sites. The legislation also solicits public comment on proposed lynching location sites with Friday, April 3, as a deadline.

In his comments, Congressman Cohen wrote, in part, "Including lynching sites in the National Park Service sends a clear message: America does not shy away from its past-we confront and learn from it to build a better future. By safeguarding these places, we ensure that the lessons of history are not forgotten, that the voices silenced by violence are heard, and that the promise of liberty and justice for all remains our guiding principle."

See Congressman Cohen's written public comments below.

More information about the NPS's special resource study on lynching locations is available at: https://parkplanning.nps.gov/projectHome.cfm?projectID=124261.

Public Comment for the Memphis Area Lynching Locations Special Resource Study

April 3, 2026

The story of America cannot be fully told without acknowledging its darkest chapters. Among these are the racially motivated lynchings that terrorized African Americans for generations. These extrajudicial acts were not isolated incidents-they were systematic tools of oppression, designed to instill fear and deny basic human rights. To omit these sites from the National Park Service is to leave a gaping hole in our nation's historical narrative.

I am pleased that the National Park Service is undertaking the study of lynching locations as directed by my legislation, the Evaluating Lynching Locations Act, or ELL Act, which was signed into law in 2023. Preserving these locations is not about reopening old wounds; it is about healing them through truth. Our national parks serve as living classrooms, teaching future generations about the triumphs, tragedies, and landscapes that shaped our democracy. Just as we commemorate battlefields and civil rights landmarks, we must also memorialize the places where justice was denied so brutally. People's Grocery, the Bender/Whitfield lynching site, the Ell Persons lynching site, and others remind us of the cost of hatred and the courage of those who fought against it.

Including lynching sites in the National Park Service sends a clear message: America does not shy away from its past-we confront and learn from it to build a better future. By safeguarding these places, we ensure that the lessons of history are not forgotten, that the voices silenced by violence are heard, and that the promise of liberty and justice for all remains our guiding principle.

Christopher Bender and Bud Whitfield, 1868

In 1868, two young white men, Christopher Bender and Bud Whitefield, were accused of stealing a horse in Raleigh, a neighborhood in north Memphis. While they were in custody, a group of between 40-60 armed men surrounded the jail and took Bender and Whitfield. The two men were later found lynched about a mile away from a bridge over the Wolf River. Bender and Whitefield's lynchings are significant in that they exemplify extrajudicial killings that were all too familiar in our country's past and are the only non-racially motivated lynchings recommended for study by the ELL Act.

Wash Henley, 1869

In 1869, police were alerted to reports of a 16-year-old girl who allegedly took $445 of her father's money and ran away with a Black man. The man she ran away with was Wash Henley, a Black Union Army veteran turned blacksmith, who was employed by the girl's father. Some of his friends captured Wash Henley to hand him over to the police, but a mob of 25 masked horsemen took Wash Henley, hung him, then shot and burned his body.

Wash Henley's case shows the pervasive history of how racism and hatred cause chaos and disheartening savagery which is a history that is not worth repeating - but worthy of remembrance. To have the Henley lynching acknowledged by the National Park Service would not only memorialize him but also show some of the dark history of Memphis and our country to condemn it so we never have to relive it. Henley fought for the Union and worked an honest job, but because he tried to marry a girl who happened to be White, he was brutally murdered. While there were anti-miscegenation laws in the United States during Reconstruction, the penalty was typically imprisonment or forced separation (which I believe were still morally unjust), but should never have been extrajudicial killing.

People's Grocery, the Moss, McDowell, Stewart Site, 1892

The combined lynchings of Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and William Stewart add to a plethora of cases that confirms the massacre of Black America's economy and businesses. Thomas Moss was a black businessman who owned the People's Grocery, a store in the Curve neighborhood of Memphis, Tennessee. His success made him a competitor against William Barrett, a neighboring white grocery store owner. Moss became a target of unjust accusations involving William Stewart, a young worker at the People's Grocery Store, which led to Barrett and a police officer arriving at the store to search for Stewart. They were met by the grocery clerk, Calvin McDowell, and escalated into a physical scuffle between McDowell and Barrett. Because of that interaction, the patrons of the People's Grocery prepared for an attack from an angry mob led by Barrett. Soon after, a shootout broke out between the two groups, resulting in the wounding of two police officers. To avoid further destruction towards their community from the mob in search of them, Moss, McDowell, and Stewart turned themselves in at the Shelby County Jail. Within a few days, the mob seized the three men from the jail and murdered them a mile north of the city.

The People's Grocery lynching exemplifies the racial terror that contributed to the suppression of Black Americans living in Memphis, Tennessee. Upward mobility was not only discouraged through systemic laws and Shelby County leadership, but it was also enforced by violent mobs and corrupted police gangs. It is important to learn the intricacies of past White Supremist acts that supported racial division in order to understand the racial undertones of injustices and complications today. This tragic site holds great significance towards the segregationist history in Memphis. It should be nationally recognized to honor the victims and remember the horrors that once occurred in Shelby County.

Lee Walker, 1893

Lee Walker's extrajudicial murder resulted from an accusation from a young white woman, Mollie McCadden. She claims that while she was horseback riding with her sister at Bond station in northeast Shelby County, she was dragged off her horse and assaulted by a black man. A search party began searching for the assailant while the newspapers described him as "the monster" and the "negro fiend." On July 21, Walker was arrested at his parents' home south of New Albany, Mississippi. Sheriff A.J. McLendon took Walker to the Shelby County Jail on the morning of July 22. After nightfall, a mob gathered outside the jail. They eventually broke in and dragged Walker two blocks north to his death. He was brutally beaten, stabbed, lynched from a telegraph pole, burned, and mutilated for souvenirs. Sheriff McLendon, two police captains, a deputy sheriff, and several mob leaders in the lynching were indicted by a grand jury, but prosecutors dropped the charges after they were unable to seat a jury.

The location of this heinous crime is significant because of the media surrounding the case and the involvement of law enforcement in the crime. The repeated theme of alleged interactions between Black boys and men and White men and women leading to a lynching kept Black communities fearful of doing anything that might be considered out of line.

Warner Williams, Daniel Hawkins, Robert Haynes, Edward Hall, John Hayes, and Graham White, 1894

In 1894, six African American men, Warner Williams, Daniel Hawkins, Robert Haynes, Edward Hall, John Hayes, and Graham White, were arrested for suspicion of arson at the Shelby-Tipton County fairgrounds. While they were being transported to Memphis, a mob of 50 men, armed and wearing masks, stopped their wagon and massacred all six men in "Big Creek Bottoms," Kerrville Tennessee. Thirteen suspects of this crime were indicted by a grand jury but ultimately found not guilty.

Again, rather than allowing the judicial system to charge and convict, angry vigilantes took matters into their own hands and killed men. The case is significant because of court and newspaper reports indicating that law enforcement was aware of the likelihood of a lynching in advance, yet were unable to deescalate the anger and prevent the unlawful killings.

Jesse Lee Bond, 1939

The lynching of Jesse Lee Bond's is representative of the many minor perceived slights that turn deadly for Black Americans. Jesse was a 20-year-old sharecropper who visited the S.Y. Wilson store to buy planting supplies. To ensure a record of his purchase, Bond asked for a receipt from the store cashier, Sam Wilson, who instigated an argument, then reluctantly handed over a receipt. When Sam informed his father, Charles Robert Wilson, and the store owner of the incident, the elder demanded Sam return Bond to the store. When Jesse arrived with his Aunt Luanna Bond, they were met with gunfire and ran. Charles Robert Wilson, his friend William "Bud" Johnson, and a group of others chased Bond to capture and bring him back in front of the store. They shot him to death, castrated him and then dragged his body behind a truck to the Loosahatchie River, where they staked him to the bottom. The body was "found" by authorities five days later. On the death certificate, the coroner wrote that the victim "fell into the Hatch River and was accidentally [sic] drowned." Legal records from the Shelby County archive show that Charles R. Wilson and William Johnson were charged with first-degree murder and tried before a jury. A brief article in the January 23, 1940, issue of The Commercial Appeal indicated that the two men were quickly acquitted.

Charle Morris, Jesse Lee Bonds' late 96-year-old brother, was finally given the opportunity to share his details of this murder after seven decades. In 2017, Morris testified before a joint subcommittee of the state legislature. "At the age of 97, he travelled to Nashville to tell our committee his story. When he spoke about the need for justice for his brother's death, his words touched the entire room," said State Representative Johnnie Turner. His family has fought tirelessly to commemorate their uncle by being a helping hand in passing a bill, Tennessee Cold Case Civil Rights Crime Act signed into law in May 2018, and partnering with The Lynching Sites Project of Memphis to put up a historical marker to memorialize Bond and bring awareness to the justice he never received.

Kyra Harris Bolden is the great granddaughter of Jesse Lee Bond. She was sworn in as the first Black woman to serve on the Michigan Supreme Court in its history in 2023. Ms. Bolden reckons with the pains of her family's past that were originally intended to disarm prosperity in her future, but she prevailed instead in spite of that past.

Jesse Lee Bond's lynching is an instance of a normal interaction which turned deadly due to overzealous aggression. We should not memorialize the result, but reflect upon the wrongness of this extrajudicial killing.

Ell Persons, 1917

In 1917, Ell Persons was lynched after being accused of sexual assault, and the murder and decapitation of 15-year-old Antoinette Rappel in Memphis, Tennessee. Investigators went to extreme lengths to charge Persons with the crime, including the exhumation of Rappel's body during which they "saw" Person's image in her eye. Persons was arrested twice for suspicion of the murder and upon the third was beaten until he confessed to the crime of assault and murder of Antoinette. After his arrest, he was intercepted by a mob during a police transport. He was tied to a tire, burned alive, decapitated, and dismembered for souvenirs. Published accounts of the lynching report that between 3,000 and 10,000 people attended, with a carnival-like atmosphere, with candy and food vendors present. As if the reports on this were not already haunting to the Black community, a few members of the mob rode by Beale Street and threw his decapitated head at a group of young Black teenagers.

The Ell Persons lynching is unique due to the amount of press it received across the country, from the grisly descriptions of Rappel's murder, the fear instilled in law enforcement enough to have the Sheriff leave town, and the advance notice of the day and time of the lynching, which contributed to the large crowd in attendance. The Ell Persons case remains widely discussed to this day due to the severity of the crimes against him, as well as the cautionary message it sent to Black families and people that either lived in the district or heard the stories of it.

Elbert Williams, 1940

In 1940, Elbert Williams was the first NAACP organizer known to be lynched. After encouraging Black people to vote in the upcoming election, Williams was abducted from his home. His body was found in the Hatchie River, yet authorities failed to locate suspects or make any arrests on his abduction or murder. Williams' wife and children fled their home due to the imminent danger. Many others in his family and close circle also feared that they might also be targeted. Though there is little public information on Williams' lynching, his role in the NAACP and the presumed motive of discouraging Black participation in elections is significant, especially in the years leading up to the Civil Rights Movement.

Each lynching is a heinous crime. The lynchings which predominantly targeted African Americans reinforced an underlying and insidious message to other African Americans about the unwritten rules that they had to live by in order to not be attacked or killed by a mob for doing something completely ordinary if done by a White person.

As we reckon with history, it is vitally important to first condemn these horrific acts of terror that resulted in the deaths of many Memphians, southerners, and Americans. Furthermore, we must remember the names and stories of victims whose lives were unlawfully taken. Preservation and national recognition of these sites honor the victims of lynching in our cities and reminds us to continually pursue equality and justice for all Americans.

# # #