Remembering dark moment

1906 lynching: Proud city properly calls attention to disturbing side of its history.
 

December 17, 2001

IT'S IMPORTANT to tell the bad parts of history along with the good. That's why a ceremony in Annapolis to spotlight the detestable act of lynching a century ago is worthwhile.

Mayor Ellen O. Moyer and officials from St. John's College, the Anne Arundel NAACP, the Maryland State Archives and city churches will unveil a plaque on Dec. 20 calling attention to
a mob act.

At the time, justice didn't always take its proper course when the suspect was black.

In 1906, a black man named Henry Davis was accused of raping a white woman in her Annapolis home. Before a grand jury convened, a mob dragged him out of jail, hanged him and
riddled his body with bullets.

Although most acts like this occurred in the Deep South, this murder showed that Maryland was not immune from such extreme lawless and racist behavior.

Black people also were lynched on the Eastern Shore and in Frederick and Howard counties in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Mayor Moyer and others in Annapolis are right to commemorate Henry Davis' lynching, on its 95th anniversary, with the plaque at Annapolis' Brewer Hill Cemetery.

The city has many aspects of its past that should make citizens proud, including its brief stint as the nation's capital and its early elections of African-Americans to public office.

The commemoration of the Davis lynching helps put the state capital's history in proper balance.

Copyright © 2001, The Baltimore Sun