Ahmaud Arbery and the Local Legacy of Lynching
How the white vigilante killing of the unarmed, black jogger in Brunswick, Georgia, is both an echo of past violence and a modern call to action.
On February 21, 1891, almost exactly 129 years before white vigilantes fatally shot Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, Georgia, a mob of white men lynched two black men named Wesley Lewis and Henry Jackson just outside of Brunswick. Without trial or investigation, they were hanged from a tree, riddled with more than 1,000 bullets, then left on display for thousands of white spectators to view. As one newspaper described the scene:
“...the population of Brunswick turned out en masse to visit the scene of the lynching. Vehicles were at a premium and it is estimated that more than 3,000 people made the trip to Dent Swamp during the morning. A few hundred yards away from the improvised gallows a country church was in full blast, and the singing of
