Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta

Beloved Community:
Commission for Dismantling Racism
and
The Absalom Jones Episcopal
Center for Racial Healing
presents

Reclaiming Hope Through Remembering:

A Memorial Pilgrimage
to Remember the Lynched

October 28, 2017

Chestnut Grove School  Chestnut Grove Baptist Church
Athens, Georgia
 Members of the Commission: Dr. Catherine Meeks, chair ▪ The Rev. John Bolton
Sheryl Bowen ▪ The Rev. Laura Bryant ▪ Donna Cross ▪ Melise Fathi ▪ Judy Fielder ▪ LaFawn Gilliam
The Rev. Dr. Sharon Hiers ▪ The Rev. Kim Jackson ▪ Shereetha Jackson ▪ Mary Job ▪ Beth King
Ursula Simmons ▪ The Rev. Spenser Simrill ▪ Deacon Janet Tidwell

Board of Directors for the Absalom Jones Episcopal Center for Racial Healing
Sheryl Bowen ▪ Grace Burton-Edwards ▪ Peggy Courtright ▪ LaFawn Gilliam ▪ Scotty Greene
Sharon Hiers ▪ Ken Holley ▪ Shereetha Jackson ▪ LaKeisha Jarrett ▪ Barry Jenkins ▪ Ursula Simmons
Fabio Sotelo ▪ Ken Swanson

Acknowledgements

All of the Sisters and Brothers in the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta who support this work with their
prayers, time and financial resources and all who took the time to attend the Pilgrimage today.

Ms. Annie Matthews The Athens NAACP

Chestnut Grove Baptist Church Dr. E.M.Beck
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church Covenant Presbyterian Church
Hala Hess White
 Reclaiming Hope Through Remembering:
Pilgrimages to Georgia
Sites of Martyrdom

T he Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta continues the bold step forward today in a three-year cycle
of pilgrimages to Georgia sites of martyrdom, most commonly known as lynching sites. These
pilgrimages are being organized by the Beloved Community: Commission for Dismantling Rac-
ism who believes that these sites need to be viewed as places where martyrs were made. And
all of us, whites and people of color, who make up the generations of their descendants need
to acknowledge these martyrs and mark the places where their lives were sacrificed so that we
can make more progress in moving toward the day when this legacy of terror will be vanished
forever and hope can have the opportunity to break fully into the dawn.
This chance for the birth of new hope can be made viable only through the honest declaration
of what the past has been and why it was that way. The wounds of the past will not disappear
simply because we wish for that to be the case. The work of healing has to be done. And each
time we look at the facts of history without trying to make them more acceptable by not assess-
ing guilt, we take a step forward in that work. Our quest for hope in the 21st Century requires us
to look back at this legacy before we can take the much needed steps that will lead us forward.
During the time between the Civil War and World War II, thousands of African Americans were
lynched in our country. Five hundred and ninety-five of them are documented in Georgia. This
was the method used to terrorize African Americans into submission. The victims were men,
women and children. Lynchings were for the purpose of creating racial subordination
without much resistance and a fear-based atmosphere that made it possible for racial
 W ithout memory, our existence would be barren and opaque, like a
prison cell into which no light penetrates; like a tomb which rejects
the living...If anything can, it is memory that will save humanity. For me
hope without memory is like memory without hope.

Elie Wiesel
Nobel Lecture 1986

inequality to thrive. This inequality has yet to
be adequately addressed.
Mass incarceration, excessive penal punish-
ment, disproportionate sentencing (espe-
cially death sentences) and police abuse of
people of color demonstrate the scope of the
problems that continue in American society
as a part of the legacy of racial terror to this
very day. There is no denying this truth and
no energy will be spent in trying to do that
as we move forward with these pilgrimages
across Georgia to places where lynchings
occurred.
The pilgrimages began last year in Macon,
Georgia at the Douglass Theater and the
Tubman Museum and over the course of the
next two years we will take pilgrims to other
sites in Georgia where markers will be placed
for those named and unnamed. This way
of acknowledging the many lives that were
taken because someone had to be sacrificed
in order to maintain the status quo of racial
apartheid in America will serve both as a way
for all who participate to remember and for
us to move forward in the work of disman-
tling racism. The foundation of racism was
imagined and securely constructed during this
era to keep African Americans and any other
racial minorities who were designated as un-
desirables in their place, a place of subjugation
and degradation. A place maintained by the
terror that was created when folks were forc-
ibly taken from their homes and many other
places to be killed at the hands of angry mobs.
Mobs who were often led by law enforcement
or other leaders in the towns.
The same spirit that allowed for the
horrors of slavery and lynching continued as
our nation moved from slavery to Jim Crow, to
mass incarceration and the death penalty. In
the present moment it is the guiding spirit be-
hind the extra-judicial killings by police officers
which is merely a modern method of lynching.
The Commission’s understanding of how all of
these things are connected compels its mem-
bers to be more intentional each day about
naming all of the forces that work against
long term sustainable racial healing and recon-
ciliation in our nation leads us forward.
 PROGRAM
MORNING SESSION

Welcome
Dr. Wilson Lattimore Jr.
Pastor, Chestnut Grove Baptist Church

Opening Remarks
Catherine Meeks, Ph.D.
Chair, Beloved Community: Commission for Dismantling Racism
Executive Director, Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing

Preacher
The Rev. Nontombi Naomi Tutu

Celebration of Holy Communion

Celebrant: The Rev. Laura Bryant
Interim Rector, St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church
Brief Remarks
The Honorable Nancy Denson
Mayor of Athens/Clarke County

Ms. Annie Matthews

Curator, Chestnut Grove Schoolhouse

Unveiling and Blessing of Memorial Marker

The Rev. Nontombi Naomi Tutu
The Rev. Canon John Thompson-Quartey

LUNCH

AFTERNOON SESSION

Viewing of Selected Segments of 13th

Small Group Discussions on Designated Questions

Reconvening of the Small Groups for General Group Reflection

Tours of the Schoolhouse and Cemetery

 Remembering
John Lee
Eberhardt

W hen searching for lynchings in Clarke County one does not find any listed, however John Lee
Eberhardt can be counted as a Clarke County lynching victim. He was taken from the Athens
Clarke County jail, chained and burned in Oconee County just across the county line on Highway 441
which was known at the time as the Watkinsville Road.
Eberhardt was a Staff Correspondent for The Philadelphia American newspaper and had
been threatened by whites who did not approve of the paper’s coverage of the race issues in the
region. Thus it was quite easy to accuse him of rape and murder and use that as a reason to have
him jailed and to make him available for the terror attack against him which occurred a few days
later in 192l.

Marker of Remembrance

This year the marker will be placed at the historic Chestnut Grove School which was founded in 1896
and is one of the few remaining single room schoolhouses in Georgia. It was built on land donated
by an illiterate African American farmer and built by a group of his
fellow farmers to provide a place for African American children to
be educated. The building was used for social gatherings during the
holidays and summer months. In 1984 as result of the tireless work
of Ms. Annie Matthews and others, the school was added to the
National Register of Historic Places.
We believe that this is a fitting location for such a marker. It is
surrounded by the graves of our slave ancestors, the schoolhouse which is a symbol of hope and
courage and the church which was a place where African Americans found a balm for the burdens
brought upon them by the sin sick souls of oppressors and their system of
apartheid.
We remember these 56 persons who were the victims of terror and all
those whose names we do not know and we believe that this day’s witness
to the power of telling the truth and trusting that we can be set free will
help to move us a few steps closer to racial healing in Georgia.
 Nontombi Naomi Tutu

The challenges of growing black and female in apartheid South Africa

have been the foundation of Naomi’s life as an activist for human rights.
Those experiences taught her that our whole human family loses when
we accept situations of oppression, and how the teaching and preaching
hate and division injure us all. In her speeches, she blends this passion for
human dignity with humor and personal stories.
Rev. Tutu is the third child Archbishop Desmond and Nomalizo Leah
Tutu. She was born in South Africa and had the opportunity to live in
many communities and countries. She was educated in Swaziland, the US
and England, and has divided her adult life between South Africa and the US. Growing up the
‘daughter of …’ has offered Naomi Tutu many opportunities and challenges in her life. Most
important of these has been the challenge to follow her own path and role in building a better
world. She has taken up the challenge and channeled the opportunities that she has been given
to raise her voice as a champion for the dignity of all.
Her professional experience ranges from being a development consultant in West Africa, to
being program coordinator for programs on Race and Gender and Gender-based Violence in
Education at the African Gender Institute at the University of Cape Town. In addition, Rev. Tutu
has taught at the University of Hartford, University of Connecticut and Brevard College in North
Carolina. She served as Program Coordinator for the historic Race Relations Institute at Fisk
University, and was a part of the Institute’s delegation to the World Conference Against Racism
in Durban.
She started her public speaking as a college student at Berea College in Kentucky in the 1970’s
when she was invited to speak at churches, community groups and colleges and universities
about her experiences growing up in apartheid South Africa. Since that time, she has become
a much sought after speaker to groups as varied as business associations, professional confer-
ences, elected officials and church and civic organizations.
As well as speaking and preaching Rev. Tutu has established Nozizwe Consulting. Nozizwe
means Mother of Many Lands, in her mother tongue Xhosa and is the name she was given by
her maternal grandmother. The guiding principle of Nozizwe Consulting is to bring different
groups together to learn from and celebrate their differences and acknowledge their shared hu-
manity. As part of this work she has led Truth and Reconciliation Workshops for groups dealing
with different types of conflict. She has also offered educational and partnership trips to South
Africa for groups as varied as high schools, churches, hospices, K-12 teachers, and women’s as-
sociations. These trips emphasize the opportunities to share our stories and experiences.
Rev. Tutu is the recipient of four honorary doctorates from universities and colleges in the US
and Nigeria. Rev. Tutu has been recently ordained to the transitional diaconate in the Episcopal
Diocese of Tennessee. She serves as a curate at Christ Church Cathedral in Nashville. She is the
single mother of two daughters and a son.
 807 Atlanta Student Movement Boulevard
Atlanta, Georgia 30314
404-601-5335 | cmeeks@episcopalatlanta.org

CenterForRacialHealing.org