MOTD: Nov 10, 2021 | Rosenberg Fund for Children

Mention of the Day (MOTD)

Nov 10, 2021

Sculptor Jerome Meadows shakes the hand of his figure of Ed Johnson during its dedication at a memorial at the south side of the Walnut Street Bridge in Chattanooga, Tenn., on Sunday, Sept. 19, 2021. The two other figures are those of Noah Parden and Styles Hutchens, two African-American attorneys from Chattanooga, who provided a courageous and successful defense for Johnson, who on March 19, 1906, was mob-lynched from the second span of the Walnut Street Bridge.

Powerful words spoken at a ceremony to unveil a monument to a man lynched more than a century ago are today’s Strange Fruit MOTD:

“More than 115 years after an angry mob lynched Ed Johnson from the Walnut Street Bridge, area residents got their first look Sept. 19 at the memorial to the innocent man and his two courageous attorneys.

Lakweshia Ewing of New Holy Temple Church of God in Christ told those gathered that the nation needs to address the root causes of injustice.

‘We love telling the stories about the purple mountain’s majesty, the democracy and the political justice of this nation,’ Ewing said. ‘But are we as willing to simultaneously talk about the strange fruit hanging from poplar trees in the South? The enslavement, the incarceration, the discrimination, the dehumanization of people of color in this land?’”

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