Franklin aldermen mostly support adding markers for lynching victims

At a work session Tuesday, the Franklin Board of Mayor and Aldermen (BOMA) discussed erecting three markers memorializing African American lynching victims from Reconstruction and Jim Crow era Williamson County. 

The Williamson Remembers Committee — consisting of community members such as Franklin Tomorrow Executive Director Mindy Tate, African American Heritage Society President Alma McLemore, Franklin Mayor Ken Moore and Chris Williamson of the Fuller Story — advocates for one marker to be placed in Franklin’s square and two near Bicentennial Park. Attorney Julian Bibb and the Rev. Kenneth Hill, pastor at Shorter Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, co-chair the committee. 

Hill, alongside Center for Historic Preservation Director Carroll Van West and Lamont Turner, a community advocate, spoke to the aldermen to gain input and support for the initiative.

“These markers would serve as a reminder and generate conversations about the inhumane treatment of Franklin’s African American citizens,” Hill said. “If we don’t reckon with the pain, we’re not grappling with our history in an honest way. The relevance of this history is a measure of a people’s humanity.”

At-large Alderman Brandy Blanton agreed the markers would be an important addition to Franklin’s historical narrative.

“A few years ago, we started really trying to uncover and tell a more balanced story, and I think this is the next obvious step for us to continue to balance the scales of that,” she said. “I think about people who I went to high school with who I heard say they never felt comfortable at the square or they never felt comfortable in the places I just assumed were shared by all.”

At-large Alderman Gabrielle Hanson was opposed to erecting the markers.

“You have to think about everybody who’s lost a life at the hand of someone else,” she said. “Maybe it was someone who abused their child, and the child died, does that mean their life is diminished, and it wasn’t special enough to go on a placard?

"We’ve lost a lot of people to things that weren’t right, and we continue to lose people to things that aren’t right even today, and it’s not fair to represent a handful and not represent all. I think this is going to create a bigger chasm in our community.”

She went on to claim that the markers represented “a false narrative behind social justice.”

Drafts of texts on the markers recount the factual history behind Williamson County’s many lynchings. 

For example, the beginning of the second marker reads:

“In the summer of 1868, a series of documented racially motivated terror killings happened in Williamson County. On July 19, local Ku Klux Klan members lynched an African American, William Guthrie, for allegedly assaulting Mary Ezell, a White woman. Next, unidentified African American residents killed John Ezell, Mary’s brother, who they believed was guilty of Guthrie’s lynching. The Klan escalated the violence by lynching three victims in August.”

While aldermen voiced varying opinions on the markers, Hill, West and Turner were still “encouraged” after the meeting.

“We want to stimulate that conversation because there are other people in the community who have those same thoughts,” Turner said. “The only way we flush [those thoughts] out is by servicing [people], bringing them out and becoming a better community.”

The next step for the Williamson Remembers Committee is to receive input from the Civil War Historical Commission, and afterward, BOMA will vote on whether to allow the markers.