History from Below: Memorialization Projects
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Description
We chose the location of the “lynching tree” in downtown Columbus as our memorial location. Will Miles and Jesse Slayton were two African Americans who were lynched in Columbus, Georgia in 1896. Will Miles was lynched because of a previous rape of a white woman. Shortly after, Will Miles was lynched. We was brutally shot in the face with a shotgun. Then after he was shot, the mob of angry white southerners heard there was another individual who conducted a heinous act on a white woman and his name was Jesse SLayton. The mob rushed the Columbus jail without any resistance, grabbed Slayton and lynched him on the tree next to Will Miles on present day 11th st. The symbolism of that violence is present in our memorial.
Publication Date
2019
City
Columbus, Georgia
Disciplines
History
Recommended Citation
Grant, Tyler; Belflower, Cabel; McGhee, Hannah; and Moore, Sonnet, "Four Corners Exhibit" (2019). History from Below: Memorialization Projects. 1.
https://csuepress.columbusstate.edu/historyfrombelow/1
