Here’s why this Kentucky community is coming together to remember a century-old lynching
The intersection outside Versailles where U.S. 60 and 62 meet has for much of Micah Lynn’s life been an “unremarkable” location.
“You imagine it happening in some corner of some state somewhere else in some nondescript location that you’ve never heard of,” said Lynn, a freshman at Kentucky State University. “Literally, it happened just down the street from me.”
That intersection is where Lynn believes Richard W. James, a 39-year-old Black man accused of killing two white men, was hung from a tree by a mob on March 13, 1921, after a hung jury could not convict him, newspaper transcripts posted online and a national lynching database shows.
James was buried in the Sons and Daughters of Relief Cemetery in Midway and around his weathered grave on Saturday at 2 p.m. will be a remembrance service, a release stated. The community is invited to the masked, socially distant event where clergy and community leaders will honor James in “prayer, poetry and music, recalling the injustice of a century ago and challenging us to end racial injustice today.”
Additionally, Midway Mayor Grayson Vandegrift, Versailles Mayor Brian Traugott and Woodford County Judge Executive James Kay will sign a joint proclamation designating Saturday as “Richard W. James Day.”
A self-described history buff and “incredible nerd in that category,” Lynn said he began to look into James’ death last year after he’d learned of some lynchings in Frankfort and wanted to learn more about those that had happened near his hometown of Versailles. He said it was “very upsetting to me that something like that could have happened there and yet I’d never known.”
Lynn looked over old newspapers online and visited James’ grave and set out to try and get a historical marker from the Equal Justice Initiative — an Alabama-based nonprofit which does lynching remembrance projects across the country and has a memorial and museum dedicated to victims of racial violence in America.
The marker is a longer process that couldn’t be completed by the centennial of James’ death, Lynn said, so he and a coalition of community members and leaders worked to put together Saturday’s ceremony.
Learning of James’ death — one that occurred in relatively recent history among streets and places Lynn was familiar with — was transformative to the way Lynn viewed the past, he said.
“Oftentimes, some of these events and just memories in general are still relevant and prevalent today,” said Milan Bush, who last year founded Honoring Black Stories — an organization that seeks to show the contributions made by Black Kentuckians in Midway.
Bush said she partnered with Lynn and used some of her connections in the community to help put the ceremony together. She encouraged those in the community to come to the service on Saturday.
“Come out and learn and hear,” Bush said. “And even if you don’t know what to say or to do… being a part of this,you’ll be a part of how our community moves forward.”