Family and community members working with EJI dedicated a historical marker in Henry County, Alabama, memorializing Wesley “Wes” Johnson, a Black teenager accused of a crime and lynched in 1937 because he was in a relationship with a white woman.
Wes Johnson’s cousin, Mrs. Faye Walker-Howell, hosted the October 11 dedication ceremony at Rocky Mountain Freewill Baptist Church in Tumbleton, Alabama. Her great-great-grandfather helped build the church in the 1900s, she told the audience, because he wanted a place where his family and the neighboring Black community could dwell in the house of the Lord and have a place to lay their loved ones to rest—including Wes Johnson, who is buried in the church cemetery, steps from the historical marker that tells his story.
Mrs. Walker-Howell uncovered that story through decades of research into her family history, which she turned into a film. She also discovered that John Harper Oates, a white businessman and politician in Henry County, had shielded young Wes Johnson in his home. His efforts to protect Wes were thwarted when the sheriff came and took Mr. Johnson into custody. After the mob wrested Wes out of the jail and lynched him, Mr. Oates helped his family bury him at Rocky Mount. Mr. Oates’s grandson, Pat Oates, attended the dedication ceremony.
During the ceremony, Rocky Mount’s pastor, the Rev. Larry Butler, led attendees in hymns and prayer. Mrs. Walker-Howell’s youngest sister, Dr. Julia Walker Haley, read Psalm 23.
Descendant James Johnson acknowledged that there is sadness about what happened to Wes Johnson but urged that “we should not treat this as a sad occasion.” The dedication of the marker, he said, also brings “a great deal of gladness and happiness and joy that it got completed. You know, that in itself is enough to just be thankful for.”
Mrs. Walker-Howell shared that sentiment. “It’s a sigh of relief that Wes is honored, he’s remembered, and it’s just a blessing for us to have it here with him,” she told WTVY. “Now he’s out here, this marker’s out here, less than 500 feet away from his burial site.”
At the unveiling of the marker, EJI Senior Project Manager Jennifer Harris spoke about our Community Remembrance Project, which she explained is “just one of the ways that we’re able to work alongside community partners throughout the country who are taking on the challenging, necessary work of truth-telling about our history.”
Rev. Butler closed the ceremony by saying he is grateful that the community is “keeping this history alive and in our minds.”
The Lynching of Wes Johnson
On February 2, 1937, a large mob of white people brutally lynched a Black teenager named Wes Johnson near Headland, Alabama. The mob abducted Mr. Johnson from the Henry County jail in Abbeville and riddled his body with bullets before hanging him from a tree.
Mr. Johnson had been arrested two days earlier after he was accused of assaulting a white woman in Tumbleton. In reality, Mr. Johnson was in a consensual relationship with the woman. But during this period, the definition of Black-on-white “assault” in the South was incredibly broad and required no allegation of force because the justice system, laws, and most white people rejected the idea that a white woman could or would willingly enter a consensual relationship with a Black man.
The sheriff reportedly knew that the assault allegations were false, but arrested Wes Johnson anyway to appease enraged local white residents.
Around 2 am on February 2, between 50 and 100 white men drove in 25 cars up to the jail, broke into Mr. Johnson’s cell with a crowbar, and dragged him out. The mob then drove Mr. Johnson toward Tumbleton, threw him in a ditch, and shot him with shoguns and pistols before hanging him.
A “jesting, laughing” group of mob members then “stood guard” over his body while others patrolled the area to terrorize Black community members. Though the sheriff identified nine mob members, two separate all-white juries returned no indictments, and no one was ever held accountable for lynching Wes Johnson.
Lynching in America
Over 6,500 Black men, women, and children were killed in racial terror lynchings in the U.S. between 1865 and 1950. After the Civil War, many white people in the South opposed equal rights for Black people, and lynching emerged as the most public and notorious form of racial terrorism used to enforce racial hierarchy.
Almost 25% of documented lynchings were sparked by charges of inappropriate behavior between a Black man and a white woman that was often characterized as “assault” at a time when the mere accusation of sexual impropriety regularly fueled fatal mob violence.
In this era, it was common for lynch mobs to seize their victims from jails, prisons, courtrooms, or out of police hands. Though they were armed and charged with protecting the men and women in custody, police almost never used force to resist white lynch mobs intent on killing Black people. In some cases, police officials were even found to be complicit or active participants in lynchings.
Lynch mobs would often enact extreme violence to destroy the body of a victim, then allow the victim to hang for hours, preventing the family from claiming their loved one, in an attempt to maintain the racial order through the threat of violence to the entire Black community.
Wes Johnson is one of at least 13 Black victims of racial terror lynching killed in Henry County between 1865 and 1950 and one of over 545 killed in Alabama.
Community Remembrance Project
The Community Remembrance Project is part of our campaign to recognize the victims of lynching by collecting soil from lynching sites, erecting historical markers, and developing the Legacy Sites in Montgomery.
EJI believes that by reckoning with the truth of racial violence, communities can begin a necessary conversation that advances healing and reconciliation.
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