Historical marker in memory of the only documented lynching in Delaware is unveiled

Calling attention to what has been described as "a violent and often-ignored chapter of Delaware history," legislators and more than 100 community members gathered Sunday to unveil a historical marker commemorating the only documented lynching in the First State.

Installed by the Delaware Public Archives at New Castle County’s Greenbank Park in Prices Corner, the new historic marker memorializes the 1903 lynching of laborer George White at the hands of a white mob. He was burned at the stake, according to historical accounts and newspaper archives. 

"I don't think he's ever going to be forgotten," Savannah Shepherd, soon to be a senior at the Sanford School in Hockessin, said standing in front of a tower that is all that remains of the New Castle County workhouse White was imprisoned in before his death. 

OPINION: Delaware student's quest to memorialize a lynching is inspiring 

The high schooler was instrumental in getting the memorial put up and first learned of White’s murder after visiting the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama – the nation’s first memorial dedicated to the roughly 4,300 documented racial terror lynchings of African Americans between the end of the Civil War and the end of World War II.

"There was no getting George White's name out of my head," Shepherd said. "I just want to honor him. I just hope he's proud." 

White had been accused of killing Helen S. Bishop, the daughter of the Ferris Industrial School’s superintendent, weeks earlier and was held at a workhouse awaiting trial. 

Bishop, 17, was attacked on her way home from Prices Corner on June 16, 1903, according to The News Journal's archives. Her throat was cut three times and she died several hours later. 

After her death, residents called for White to be tried immediately, but instead, the proceedings were scheduled for September of that year. People quickly became impatient and decided to take matters into their own hands. 

Two attempts to carry White from the workhouse had already failed when local pastor Robert Elwood delivered a sermon that sparked a violent confrontation between White’s jailers and an angry mob. White was eventually dragged off and burned alive on June 23 while pieces of his charred body were taken by the mob as souvenirs.

The following is an expert from a 2017 Delaware Online column looking back at the lynching: 

"As night fell, thousands stormed the prison where White was being protected, while the warden, prison guards and Wilmington police tried to stop the frenzied mob, firing shots and turning on high-pressured water hoses. In the melee, a 15-year-old boy was fatally shot. The would-be lynchers forced their way through steel doors into White’s prison cell, took him to a field near the scene of the crime, lit a pyre of straw and fence posts smashed into kindling, coiled ropes around the man and threw him into the fire.

White twice freed himself only to be thrown back into the flames as thousands of all ages watched and some cheered. The New York Sun wrote, “By dawn a few pale bones were all that remained of the black man. Vendors hawked them in the streets of Wilmington as souvenirs.” The Every Evening reported on people taking pieces of wood, clothing and even the body from the pyre." 

The lynching made national news. A minister’s letter to the New York Times called Delaware “a community corrupted in civic ideals and void in civic and moral virility.”

Pres. Teddy Roosevelt reportedly said: “Whoever in any part of our country has taken part in lawlessly putting to death a criminal by fire must forever have the awful spectacle of his own handiwork seared into his brain and soul. He can never again be the same man.”

No one was ever convicted of any crimes related to White's murder, though one man was initially arrested. The charges against him were quickly dismissed, according to The News Journal's archives. 

Elwood, the pastor, was found guilty by the Presbyterian church of being "unchristian" but instead of being punished was told to be more "judicious in the future," according to The News Journal's Archives. 

Although a documentary has been made about White’s lynching and the story has been repeated over the years by various historians and journalists, the incident has been largely forgotten by the general public.

From columnist Harry Themal: New Castle County’s gruesome 1903 lynching by fire

That is until Shepherd, a high schooler, went to see the memorial in Alabama.

It is operated by the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit founded by criminal justice reform pioneer and Milton, Delaware-native Bryan Stevenson, who is now the subject of the HBO documentary “True Justice,” slated to premiere on June 26.

His brother, Howard Stevenson, professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, was at the historical marker's unveiling Sunday. 

"Why do we need to remember the past?" he asked the crowd. 

Because there's no reconciliation without truth, he said. 

Shepherd has helped the community take a step in that direction, he said. After she got home from Alabama, she founded the Delaware Social Justice Remembrance Coalition and worked to get a historic marker placed in the area where White was killed.

She approached Sen. Darius Brown, D-Wilmington, who agreed to cover the cost of the marker and advance Shepherd’s efforts. Brown is also chair of the Delaware Legislative Black Caucus. 

"It's important for all Delawareans to know what our history is so not only can we have the knowledge of it and some of the ugly, unfortunate things that have occurred but how we can also work together to improve and create opportunities along racial lines here in the state of Delaware," Brown said Sunday. 

Brown said public acknowledgment of the lynching is long overdue. 

U.S. Sen. Chris Coons called the lynching "shocking, vulgar, violent history," and talked about the dangers of white nationalism once again rearing its head in the U.S. 

"Those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it," he said. 

U.S. Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester, the first African-American and the first woman to represent Delaware in Congress, said growing up in Delaware, she had heard rumors of the lynching. But no one seemed to know the full story. 

She challenged the crowd to speak his name out loud. 

"Geoge White, George White, George White," they chanted. 

"George White, we say your name," Blunt Rochester said. 

Blunt Rochester, echoing Howard Stevenson, said things need to be brought out into the open before healing can take place. 

"I believe trauma and hate grow like mold with two ingredients: silence and darkness," she said, adding that both are woven into the walls of some of the country's greatest institutions. 

"Let me tell you, we cannot Febreze this stuff away. To fully heal, you need sunlight and love." 

Contact Jessica Bies at (302) 324-2881 or jbies@delawareonline.com. Follow her on Twitter @jessicajbies.