Page 44 - Florida Sentinel 7-10-20

Feature
Community Meeting Date Set To Discuss Lynching Markers
BY GWEN HAYES Sentinel Editor
On Wednesday, July 29, 2020, the community is invited to a meeting on the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) project of establishing Lynching Markers.
Due to continued increases in COVID-19 (coron- avirus) infections, the Community Meeting for the Equal Justice Initiative project will be held virtually.
This is an effort by many community partners to work with EJI to erect a memorial marker for racial lynchings that occurred in the Tampa-Hillsborough era in the Jim Crow era.
Join Tampa City Councilman Luis Viera - Dis- trict 7, Chairman; Representative Fentrice Driskell, Tammy Briant Spratling, Fred Hearns, Rev. Glenn Dames, Pastor Christo- pher Harris and Robert Blount of Abe Brown Min- istries, Inc., and many others for this community discussion.
For more than a year, this group has been working locally to have a memorial marker erected in our com- munity for racial lynchings.
"It is my honor to work with so many great com- munity leaders on this project. Now more than ever, we need to build bridges. We need to repair the breach. And we need to make historical wrongs right
CITY COUNCILMAN LUIS VIERA
STATE REP. FENTRICE DRISKELL
good American builds bridges. Second, a good Ameri- can repairs the breach. And third, a good American makes right the historical wrongs in our own time. This EJI project seeks to do these steps,” he said.
Representative Fentrice Driskell (Florida House, District 63), said "We are excited about the progress made by our grassroots efforts to erect a lynching memorial in Tampa.
“What started out as the hope and dream of a small group of dedicated people has now grown into a shared vision throughout the community. In order to under- stand the current state of racial inequality in America, it is important to understand our country's history with respect to the treatment of Black people.
“This lynching memorial project attempts to bridge the gap between Tampa's past with our current strug- gle for equality in the present. With our upcoming event, we hope to give an update on our progress, in- cluding our new partnership with the Equal Justice Initiative, and bring even more people into the fold as we move forward with this important endeavor.”
To submit a question in advance of the meeting, please email the question(s) to bran- non.jordanlazo@tampagov.net. You can join on Facebook live at this page (https://www.facebook.com/tampaEJIpro- ject/).
in our own time. This is painful and acute history and we have to know it and honor the victims, and connect it to today's tragedies,” he said.
From 1877 to 1950, Florida ranked first nationally in per-capita lynchings.
“All of these are tragic. Some of these lynchings oc- curred in areas where we frequently travel. Robert Johnson, for example, was taken by a mob near Har- rison Street in downtown Tampa and murdered along the Hillsborough River near Sligh Avenue,” states Councilman Viera.
“When it comes to our hurtful history, it is the duty of a good American to do three things in 2020. First, a
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