Salisbury forming Lynching Memorial Task Force

SALISBURY, Md. – City leaders have agreed to form a Lynching Memorial Task Force after recommendations from the City’s Human Rights Advisory Committee.

Members will help create a permanent monument for the three people who lost their lives at the hands of lynch mobs in Wicomico County. Garfield King, Matthew Williams and an unidentified black man were murdered between the years 1898 and 1931. Salisbury’s Mayor says he hopes this monument will help give those three men some of their dignity back since no one has ever been held accountable for their murders.

“Whether it’s a past injustice or a current injustice, if we don’t acknowledge it, it’s a lingering injustice. So I think the purpose of this effort and what I took from the committees recommendation is that we as a city have awakened to the fact that there were past wrongs,” says Salisbury’s Mayor Jake Day.

The task force will help decide on the design, language and location of the memorial. The project will be funded by the Equal Justice Initiative then installed and maintained by the City of Salisbury.

If you’re interested in applying to be on the task force: click here.