Source: Politics<\/p>\n
ANNAPOLIS, Md. \u2014 Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan will posthumously pardon 34 victims of racial lynching in the state who were denied legal due process in the allegations against them between 1854 and 1933, a spokesman for Hogan said Saturday.<\/p>\n
Michael Ricci, Hogan\u2019s spokesman, said the sweeping pardon is the first of its kind by a governor.<\/p>\n
Hogan will sign the order at an event honoring Howard Cooper, a 15-year-old who was dragged from a jailhouse and hanged from a sycamore tree by a mob of white men in 1885 before his attorneys could file an appeal of a rape conviction reached by an all-white jury in minutes.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, the Maryland Lynching Memorial Project and students at Loch Raven Technical Academy petitioned Hogan to issue the pardon for Cooper. After receiving the request, the Republican governor directed his chief legal counsel to review all of the available documentation of racial lynching in Maryland.<\/p>\n
\u201cJustice has not been done with respect to any of these extrajudicial killings, which violated fundamental rights to due process and equal protection of law,\u201d according to a draft clemency document that Hogan is scheduled to sign.<\/p>\n
Hogan and other state officials are scheduled to attend a ceremony in Towson, Maryland, next to the former jailhouse where Cooper was held. A historic marker will be unveiled at the site in a partnership with the Baltimore County Coalition of the Maryland Lynching Memorial Project, the Equal Justice Initiative and Baltimore County. <\/p>\n
The sign says Cooper\u2019s body was left hanging \u201cso angry white residents and local train passengers could see his corpse.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cLater, pieces of the rope were given away as souvenirs,\u201d the sign says. \u201cHoward\u2019s mother, Henrietta, collected her child\u2019s remains and buried him in an unmarked grave in Ruxton. No one was ever held accountable for her son\u2019s lynching.\u201d<\/p>\n
The ceremony is part of a continuing effort by the Maryland Lynching Memorial Project, a group of 13 county chapters that is working to document the history of lynching in the state.<\/p>\n
In 2019, a marker in Annapolis, the state capital, commemorated the five known Black men who were hanged or fatally shot without trial in Maryland\u2019s Anne Arundel County.<\/p>\n
The Equal Justice Initiative has documented more than 6,500 racial lynchings in the country.<\/p>\n
Will Schwarz, who is president of the memorial project, described the posthumous pardons as a powerful moment in acknowledging the truth \u2014 a critical step toward reconciliation. He said the history of racial terror lynching in the United States has been ignored for so long that most people don\u2019t know the scale of the problem. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a responsibility to try and dismantle that machine of white supremacy and this is a big piece of it, acknowledging the violation of civil rights and of due process that were a part of these awful lynchings,\u201d Schwarz said. <\/p>\n
There have been 40 documented lynching cases in Maryland, Schwarz said. In some of those cases, the victims were not yet arrested, so they were not part of the legal system and not eligible for the posthumous clemency approved Saturday by Hogan.<\/p>\n
Two years ago, state lawmakers created the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which is the first of its kind in the nation. The commission was formed to research lynchings and include its findings in a report.<\/p>\n