Acknowledging the abomination of lynchings of African-Americans at the hands of white mobs, yesterday Maryland Governor Larry Hogan (R-Never Trump) issued posthumous pardons for 34 victims of lynchings. Some victims were awaiting trial, some sentencing, and some appeal. Hogan read each of the names of the victims, some as young as 13. The lynchings took place between 1854 and 1933:
"Hogan announced the pardons on a rainy morning in Towson, standing feet away from a building that was once a jail. There, nearly 136 years ago, 75 men, their faces concealed with masks, pulled 15-year-old Howard Cooper from his cell and hanged him from a nearby sycamore tree.
Historians say Cooper, who had been accused of rape and was scheduled to be executed, was lynched before his attorneys could appeal his case to the U.S. Supreme Court."
Hogan, who ends his term in 2022, is the first Governor to make a broad pardon of all known lynching victims in any state. Hogan said that a petition by middle schoolers to consider a pardon for Howard Cooper led to looking a the entirety of lynchings in the state.
On the list of lynching victims that Hogan read was one particularly poignant one:
"He read each of the victims’ names aloud before signing the pardons, ending his list with a 13-year-old boy named Fredrick, whose full name, the governor said, 'was lost to history.' The boy was hanged from a tree in or near Cecilton, a small city about 35 miles southwest of Wilmington, Del., around September 1861." (our emphasis)
While pardoning the victims of racist lynchings and lawlessness is long overdue and just, we can never pardon the murderers that carried out the lynchings.
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