Legend tells of a beast that flies over Middletown, Maryland looking for prey to drag back to its lair on Catoctin Mountain. The creature, a half-bird half-reptile, had “huge wings, a long pointed tail, occasionally a horn, one eye in the middle of its forehead and, strangest of all, octopuslike tentacles that trailed behind it like streamers and retracted like a cat’s claws.” It came to be known as the Snallygaster and supposedly, it had a taste for human flesh…and a particular group of people above all others.
In the mid 1830s, Washington stood on edge as pro and anti-slavery forces battled for influence. Conditions were ripe for D.C.’s first race riot, which erupted in August 1835 when a lynch mob targeted Beverly Snow, a successful free black restaurateur.
George Armwood was the last recorded lynching in the state of Maryland. The story of his murder and its shocking aftermath exposed the depth and sinister workings of white supremacy in one of the darkest chapters of American history.
In the late 1800s, Metropolitan A.M.E. Church was a center for anti-lynching activism in Washington, D.C. Famed journalist Ida Wells-Barnett addressed the church on at least two occasions and, in 1894, Frederick Douglass delivered one of his last speeches from the Metropolitan A.M.E. pulpit. Entitled “The Lessons of the Hour” Douglass's address was an epic condemnation of lynching – from its pervasiveness, to its general acceptance amongst both Southern and Northern whites.
In 1915, The Birth of a Nation was a controversial blockbuster and a D.C. schoolteacher, Angelina Weld Grimké, was a writer unafraid to use her art as form of protest. This is the story of "Rachel," an acclaimed anti-lynching play written in Washington, D.C.
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, is dedicated to all the victims of racial terror lynching in this country. The memorial is made of hundreds of steel monuments with the names of all known lynching victims inscribed on the front. A monument representing Alexandria, Virginia contains two names: Joseph McCoy and Benjamin Thomas. This is their story, and our community's history.
