“Together, we can build a brighter, more inclusive society, where every culture is seen and heard.”
On this note, Kyrah Jennings, a sophomore at Northwest Whitfield High School, ended her award-winning essay. The scholarship contest was sponsored by the Whitfield Remembrance Project, which seeks to memorialize the five victims of racially-based lynching that occurred in Whitfield County between 1888-1936 as well as promote community conversations about racial reconciliation and healing, and the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) in Montgomery, Alabama.
The EJI is a nonprofit organization founded in 1989 by Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer and activist. The EJI focuses on challenging racial and economic injustice and advocating for criminal justice reform in the United States.
The organization’s work is rooted in addressing issues such as mass incarceration, racial inequality and the legacy of slavery and segregation. The EJI provides legal representation to prisoners who may have been wrongly convicted, unfairly sentenced or denied proper legal representation. It has also taken on cases involving juveniles sentenced to life imprisonment without parole and individuals facing the death penalty, most famously in the book and its movie adaptation “Just Mercy.”
According to the EJI, 196 people have been exonerated and released from death row since 1973, which means that for every eight people who have been executed on death row, one person has been exonerated, a shocking rate of error.
The EJI also sponsors and supports community remembrance projects. Winners of the Whitfield County Racial Justice Essay Contest received a total of $5,300 in scholarship money, divided among five students: a first, second and third place winner and two honorable mentions.
Jennings, the first place winner, attends Northwest, and all other students attend Dalton High. The contest was open to all public school students in Whitfield County Schools and Dalton Public Schools. Some of the essays submitted touched on the lasting effects of the 3/5 Compromise, the lynchings that occurred in Whitfield County and the history of segregation in Dalton Public Schools via the Emery Center.
The award ceremony was held at the Emery Center on Sunday, March 10, and was wel-attended by the community, including state Sen. Chuck Payne and other local politicians.
Curtis Rivers, director of the Emery Center and a 1958 graduate of the segregated school, welcomed the attendees and opened the ceremony. Local attorney and author Sam Gowin told the story of Will Thomas, a 20-year-old Black man from Louisville, Kentucky, who was passing through Cohutta and was blamed for an attempted rape in Tunnel Hill. Although there was no evidence to tie him to the crime, an armed mob apprehended him and lynched him outside the Tunnel Hill Depot on March 9, 1888.
“To truly love a place, like a person maybe, I can’t just know the good stuff, the promotional materials, but also the rough stuff, the cruel things it’s capable of. And with that, I think it’s good to remember the short, tragic life of William Thomas of Louisville, Kentucky, who was killed here 136 years and one day ago,” said Gowin.
Local teacher Valerie Silva spoke about the formation of the Whitfield Remembrance Project in 2022 and introduced members of the coalition to the group. Dalton native and historian Neill Herring spoke of the importance of confronting the undesirable parts of our history to better understand who we are as a community and told the story of the last lynching that occurred in Dalton, that of Lon McCamy in September 1936. Herring also introduced the next undertaking that the Whitfield Remembrance Project will be planning, a ceremony at the site of the 1936 lynching to take place later this year.
Cheryl Phipps, vice president of the Dalton-Whitfield NAACP, gave a brief summary of several of the essays submitted, and then introduced Jennifer Harris of the EJI, who traveled from Montgomery to Dalton to present the awards. After giving a brief history and description of the mission and work of the EJI, Harris presented the following awards: Sawyer McKeehan and Spencer Hayes (honorable mention), David Andrade (third place), Jazmin Nuñez (second place) and Jennings (first place).
Retired Presbyterian minister and coalition member Dick Neelly offered closing remarks.
“The history we share is composed of many forks in the road. Our ancestors chose some paths that led us to suffer and they chose others that gave us hope for a better way to live. We cannot relive the past, but we can learn from it, and the most important fork in our roads, as individuals and as a society, is actually neither in the past nor in the future. The most important fork in the road for us is the one where we find ourselves in the present.
“We cannot go back any more than we can go into the future until it has come upon us. But one thing over which we have choice and responsibility is the present fork in the road. I believe that the Equal Justice Institute in Montgomery, Alabama, has encouraged communities like ours to learn from our mistakes, imagine a better future, but most of all take responsibility for choices that are given us in the very present, where we are living now.
“The students recognized here today for the essays they have written took advantage of such encouragement. I thank you, students, again, for participating in this essay project. You have helped all of us by doing so.”
For more information, visit the Equal Justice Initiative at www.eji.org or email whitfieldremembranceproject@gmail.com.