That Was Then and This is Now - Has Anything Changed? - April Grayson - Sunday, June 21, 2020

Speakers:  Members of the Lafayette County Lynching Memorial Team
Service Leader: Eunice Benton 
​
85 years ago Elwood Higginbottom, an African American citizen of Lafayette County, was lynched near the 3-way intersection in Oxford. Higginbottom was a share cropper, a husband and a father who was killed because he was protecting his family.  He is identified as the last known lynching victim in Lafayette County.  

In October 2018, nearly 500 people, including many from the Higginbottom family, gathered in Oxford to memorialize Elwood Higginbottom.  At the culmination of the memorial event, a plaque telling the Higginbottom story was installed at the 3-way intersection site. Since 2018, the Lafayette County Lynching Memorialization Team of about 20 people have worked in cooperation with the Equal Justice Initiative to continue the work of researching and remembering the people who were lynched in Lafayette County.  This team plans to install a marker on the courthouse lawn naming all the victims of lynching in Lafayette Co.

At the Jun 21 Sunday service UUCO welcomes this team to reflect on their work, the next steps and how this work connects to the recent murders of African Americans in this country and the swell of support for the Black Lives Matter initiative.  Members of the steering team include April Grayson, Alonzo and Terry Hilliard, Effie Burt, Emma Rice, Fred Lorenzo, Martha and Jon Scott, Gail Stratton, Laura Harper, Michael Johansson, Donald Cole, Duncan Gray, Randon Hill, Wil Howie, Correl Howle and Nicole Gladden.  Members of the team will reflect on how memorializing the past changes us in the present.  

The Zoom Service will start at 11:00 on Sunday morning. 

Topic: Sunday Service June 21, 2020
Time: Jun 21, 2020 10:30 AM Central Time (US and Canada)

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