(tense music) Not all history is happy.

Some history should make you cry if you have a heart.

♪ (Walt) It's important to tell these stories, these historical stories, to say, "Look, humans are capable of doing this.

It's happened here."

♪ (Don) This way, if we understand and we remember these things that happened, we won't let our guards down.

♪ Focusing on this brutal history, focusing on what happened allows us to be resolute in our determination to assure that it doesn't happen again.

♪ On April 23rd, we remember Joseph McCoy and on August 8th, we remember Benjamin Thomas and it will always be that way.

♪ It's really unique that a city has so many historic sites and museums and is so dedicated to telling its story and preserving its history.

I mean, Alexandria is really a model for historic preservation and museum management.

(Audrey) Alexandria is a seaport town founded in 1749, and slavery has always been a part of our history in Alexandria.

But what most people are not aware of is that we were really one of the major hubs for the domestic slave trade, the internal slave trade that you're seeing in the early part of the 19th century through the Civil War.

This is not the transatlantic slave trade bringing enslaved Africans to the Americas.

We're talking about the domestic slave trade, the internal slave trade.

The Freedom House Museum at 1315 Duke Street was the former business office for five separate, what we call human traffickers or dealers in slaves, between 1828 and 1861 with the Union occupation of the city of Alexandria.

So we have a legacy, not only of our documented lynchings, but we also have this unfortunately horrific history of enslavement here in the city and the thousands of men, women, and children who were trafficked from Alexandria and sent to areas further in the Deep South.

You know, everybody learns about the larger historical events in our nation but our nation's really built on small communities, and Alexandria's story is really a reflection of the national story.

And now we're trying to tell everybody the story of Alexandria, the good and the bad.

(somber music) ♪ (Audrey) Around 2017, the city received a letter from EJI.

They were going around the country looking at many cities and counties where there were documented lynchings and asking these counties and cities if they would be willing to join the journey to explore this lynching history, to really make a commitment to it.

Not just that you're gonna put up a marker and you're done, but to really, fully educate your community about the history of racial terror hate crimes.

(Gretchen) The Equal Justice Initiative opened its legacy museum in April of 2018.

It was kind of laid out, you know, we have a lynching pillar with two individuals from your community and we want you to claim this pillar.

This is a history that we have in this community.

This is an opportunity for us to tell that history and interpret that history, and we jumped at that, we absolutely jumped at that.

(Gretchen) We felt that as a community, we needed to go in person.

We wanted to honor Benjamin Thomas and Joseph McCoy and their descendants as a sign that we owned this racial injustice.

We wanted, as a group, to do our soil collection from the lynching locations and deliver it personally to the Equal Justice Initiative.

As we touch this sacred soil, we make a personal pledge to dedicate ourselves to equity, justice, and peace.

The ACRP, or Alexandria Community Remembrance Project, is a multi-generational group of citizens and local activists who believe in social justice and who want to work with the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, to educate our own community about the legacy of racial terror hate crimes, but also work for transformational justice.

One of the most important things about ACRP and about the work that the Equal Justice Initiative is doing is the education component.

Documenting these lynchings and then also educating the community, because if you know about the history of racial terror hate crimes and you know the devastation that it causes, you can help prevent that from happening in your community to any racial group.

Well, people don't know what they don't know, and I feel that all of us have a responsibility to--to learn the truth and then teach the truth and advocate for the truth.

When I learned of the project and I learned of these tragedies and these horrific incidents, I said to myself, you know, "They're not too far removed.

They didn't happen that long ago."

(Raalim) When I actually started attending the Remembrance Project meetings initially, they had a delegation in from Germany, and that delegation was talking about how, one, there are no monuments to Hitler in Germany and how they make it a point to study what happened in Auschwitz, they make it a point to study the Holocaust.

Not as a sign of submission, but as the act of ultimate defiance, that this horrid thing that humans did to other humans, we will ensure that this does not happen again by remembering.

On Thursday evening, April 23rd, 1897, around eight o'clock... ("Joseph McCoy") A police officer came by looking for my employer, Mr. Richard Lacy.

I told the officer that I had seen Mr. Lacy go into town a while back.

He said he was Lieutenant James Smith.

Then he said, "I'm gonna take you down to the station house with me."

He grabbed my arm and led me to the street.

Joseph McCoy was 18 years old and he was accused of sexually molesting the daughter of a man that he had worked for since childhood.

You see African Americans after the Civil War gaining rights and gaining positions in government and a few years of glory for African Americans when you can think that anything is possible.

But those years of positivity, those years of achievement were seen as years of danger for the white community, and it was threatening to them that these people who were just a few years ago who were enslaved now have some power.

("Joseph McCoy") When we got to the police station on the east side of City Hall, Lieutenant Smith told me I was under arrest for hurting Annie Lacy, my employer's daughter.

I told him, "That's not true."

He walked me down a corridor and put me in a cell.

Later, Lieutenant Smith handcuffed me and led me upstairs to the police chief's office.

The chief wasn't there, but John Strider, a city councilman and reporter for the Washington Times, was sitting behind the chief's desk.

Mr. Strider had a pad and a pencil.

Lieutenant Smith told me that Mr. Strider was there as a witness.

"I want you to tell me the truth," Lieutenant Smith said.

"Did you tamper with that little girl in a criminal way?"

I denied the allegation.

They still charged me with a felony.

(Audrey) He's never offered a lawyer, he's never given any of the rights that you think of an accused person, especially someone accused of crimes this serious.

There was a reporter and city councilman who was sitting in on the questioning and says though that McCoy, even though he denies it, after some persuasion, then confesses.

As an African American, it was hard to assert your rights because by asserting your rights, you could bring danger to yourself and your family.

And I think through lynching, many whites realized that this was a way to use it as a very public way to control a population that they wanted to control.

("Joseph McCoy") Shortly after 11 o'clock, there were a lot of voices outside the station.

A crowd was gathering on Fairfax Street.

The police went out and urged about 150 men to let the law take its course.

A sharp crack sounded.

The double doors of the station swung open.

Several men burst into the station house.

"Fire," ordered Lieutenant Smith, and the officers fired their revolvers into the air.

Boom.

Some officers slammed the door shut, bracing them with the same timber the mob used to break in.

Windows were broken, glass was littering the sidewalk.

Lieutenant Smith went outside to close the shutters.

The mob had also knocked out the street lamp, and when the chief of police arrived at the station house, it was shrouded in darkness.

By one o'clock on Friday, April 23rd, at least 500 people were in front of the station.

They demanded the police turn me over, but the officers said no.

Seconds later, the doors gave way to a 16-foot piece of timber.

(Audrey) A mob develops and they want to lynch him.

And you see that Joseph McCoy is failed at almost every part of this legal process.

He's not protected, he's not given a lawyer.

(Justin) The governor at the time, after the lynching occurred, was so offended that this had happened because he said, "Oh," you know, basically, "we have a justice system to take care of this stuff and they would make sure he was executed."

You know, whether he was guilty or not essentially was the subtext there.

And basically suggesting that, "Hey," like, "We were capable of this extra-judicial brutality, um, and now we've developed systems that do it for us."

One of the things that, for me, this compels is us looking at those systems and determining whether we are basically part of a, you know, a lynch mob by another name.

("Joseph McCoy") Sensing what was about to happen, Officer Wilkinson showed me a hiding place above the cell door and helped me wedge into it.

Meanwhile, wild, unhinged men poured through the open doors and broken windows of the station house.

The papers reported that some of the lynchers pinned officers down so they couldn't protect me.

Others swung axes at the door leading to the cells.

I fell from my hiding spot above the door, but quickly found a new spot in the corner behind a bench.

I was crouching there when a white man found me.

(Audrey) You think of now when we tell children a police station is where you can go to be safe.

A police station then was not where you were going to be safe.

You were very lucky if you had maybe a few hours of being protected, but for Benjamin Thomas and for Joseph McCoy, these institutions, these places where we think can provide safety and protection didn't.

("Joseph McCoy") A shout went out, and then what felt like a million white hands clutched my shoulders, tore at my shirt, and pulled my hair.

I was dragged through the corridor, past the chewed-up double doors of the station house, and thrown into the middle of Fairfax Street.

On my knees, I begged for my life.

Sweat, blood, tears ran together.

I could not see in front of me as they beat me with clubs.

They forced me to the corner of Fairfax and then down Cameron Street.

A stolen rope became a noose.

It looped around my neck.

The lamp post at the corner would be my gallows.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw cobblestone, then a searing pain engulfed my eye and head.

Bullets pierced my shoulder and tore into my thigh.

The rope grew taut around my neck.

I can't breathe.

I... can't... breathe.

So you see that all of these things occur and that he's doomed, really, from the beginning.

While he is being force marched, he's being pelted with cobblestones, he's being stabbed.

He actually doesn't die from the hanging, he dies from gunshots, and it's just such a horrible situation, and you're seeing all of these people, white and Black, see that this is going on, and this kind of mob justice and vigilantes who are taking the law into their own hands are really changing forever the character of the city.

A young man being terrified like that, terrorized like that, knowing that, most likely, that he was gonna die?

I couldn't imagine the fright that he experienced and nobody stood by him, nobody.

We were contacted about a year and a half ago by the city of Alexandria and we were told that we were descendants from Joseph McCoy who was lynched in Alexandria, Virginia.

When I realized the circumstances that Joseph McCoy died under alone, this is the least I can do to preserve and promote his memory.

Both were so young, they didn't have children themselves, so we were looking to find relatives who were related to them.

And you don't know if the family knows this history and you don't want to shock them.

So the very first thing I did was sent an e-mail to each of the people, giving them the history and letting them know we know that this might be traumatic, uh, we know that you may not want to talk to us.

We know that you may know this history and have strong feelings about the city, but we wanna be there for you and we want you to be able to not only know more about this history, but we also have a commitment to you that our city will know about this history and future generations will know about this history.

And I think one of the most special days of my career will be when the McCoy family were here in September of 2022 for our soil collection ceremony, and we could spend the weekend with them, and we took them on a tour of the sites related to Joseph McCoy.

We took them to the church that his family was affiliated with, which was Roberts Memorial United Methodist Church.

In 1897 and 1899, two Alexandria families had their hearts broken and the trajectory of their lives forever changed just feet from where we sit today.

(Debra) I remember the first time I went there and my daughter was with me.

It was a somber occasion, and then we had some people that accompanied us, that gave us the background of the time, background of the community, background of what happened.

They had researched the incident.

It was reported in The Washington Post at that particular time.

Today, as we touch this soil, as our community fills the jars, we send our love and peace to the souls of Joseph McCoy and Benjamin Thomas.

We send our love to the McCoy family members, recently met, and to the Thomas family members we hope to be with soon.

We sat down with our city manager and had lunch with them and laid it out that we apologize as a community.

This was wrong and we're owning it and we couldn't be more proud that we're here together today.

I just felt obligated to participate, support, learn as much as I could and be thankful for those who chose to remember this tragic event.

I believe it's very important to understand that we stand for our brothers and sisters who wore these uniforms before us.

We are the face of the government.

(Sean) No one before this community remembrance project happened apologized for what happened, and you have to apologize, and you have to ask for forgiveness, and you have to acknowledge that the government's role in that, the sheriff's office role in that, the police department's role in that, the city government's role in that played a big part of it and they have to take ownership and responsibility.

And it's never too late to take ownership and responsibility, and that's what we're doing now.

As I've said before, law enforcement's history of racial oppression must be acknowledged, particularly by those of us who serve in the profession.

The acknowledgement now with the city of Alexandria and the compassion that they have showed toward our family it's notable, it's notable.

We were very appreciative of the respect for the life of Joseph McCoy.

I had the police officer, who wasn't born-- I'm older than the police officer, but he came and apologized for the action his police department had taken.

The mayor apologized.

These are people that were not around, but they represented those offices that did not do what they were supposed to do in protecting Joseph McCoy.

Those of us who hold public office and who are entrusted by the citizenry to execute their duties impartially without fear or favor to any person would do well to remember what happened to Joseph McCoy and to be reminded of what havoc occurs when public servants stand by and do nothing in the face of evil.

125 years ago, Joseph McCoy was brutally lynched by a racist mob without the benefit of due process.

I hereby officially apologize to Mr. McCoy on the behalf of my office for its failure to do what was right in the moment.

I know they didn't lynch him, but the fact that they-- it was an acknowledgement, I have a connection to this ugly past and I want to acknowledge that connection to the ugly past.

I'm not guilty of it and I don't hold them responsible for it, but there is a connection with that ugly past.

(Mayor Justin Wilson) And you know, we quote on the marker Joseph McCoy's aunt.

And we quote her saying that as the people killed him, they will have to bury him.

And you can trace Joseph McCoy's aunt to about a half century later to Mamie Till, saying, "Let them see what they have done to my boy."

And you can trace that to a little over a half century later to the same murders we see on TV, on cable television regularly today.

In the Jewish tradition, there is a tradition to lay a stone at the site of-- oftentimes a burial site, but today, brokenheartedly, a lynching site.

The symbol of the stone represents both the grief that we feel in our hearts over this senseless and savage murder.

And the second reason we leave a stone at the site is there is a durability, there is an endurance to a stone that differs from a flower that will wither and blow away.

But a stone symbolizes permanence, that Mr. McCoy, his life is a part of our city's legacy, deserves and must be honored and remembered as we do today.

(man) On behalf of the family, we just want to thank the city of Alexandria from the bottom of our hearts, heartfelt appreciation and gratitude for this observance.

We've been moved emotionally, spiritually on every level, but still we want to thank the city of Alexandria for remembering Joseph McCoy in this way.

(mournful music) ♪ So you move from April 23rd, 1897, two years later to August 8th, 1899, with the lynching of Benjamin Thomas, again, accused of a similar crime.

"On Monday night, August 7th, 1899, at eight o'clock, there was a loud knock on our front door."

("Benjamin Thomas") We had just finished dinner.

Mama was cleaning up.

I started toward the door.

I saw two police officers.

One was trying to peer inside.

Officer Wilkinson asked if I was Benjamin Thomas.

Officer Knight said they were looking for me and told me I was under arrest.

Wait, I had been home with Mama all day, I hadn't done anything!

Why were they arresting me?

The officer said I had assaulted the little white girl who lived next door to us.

I told them, "I am innocent."

They handcuffed me, took me out my door, down my steps, away from my home.

Mama was standing in the doorway shaking her head.

"No, no, no!"

That was the last time I saw 700 North Patrick Street.

And while today we have markers at both lynching sites, for many years, these sites were not marked, but the people in the community, especially in the late 19th century, early 20th century, remembered that a lynching occurred here and a lynching occurred here.

And so when you think about families strolling around the streets, you wonder if parents said to their kids or told the story about the lynching and reminded them of how they needed to behave or how they needed to act and how they needed to be very extra careful or maybe that you don't spend any time with your white friends especially if they're girls, because you don't know what you could be accused of.

("Benjamin Thomas") At the station house, the police said my next door neighbor, Edward Kloch, a white man, swore out the warrant for my address.

He told them that I assaulted his daughter, Lillian.

I am innocent!

They opened an iron door and led me down a hallway lined with jail cells separated with iron.

It looked like cages.

The doors clanged shut, the key scraped the metal as it turned.

I was alone.

On Tuesday, August 8th, at the mayor's court in City Hall, I learned that more than 100 Black Alexandrians were in the streets the night before.

The police told the court that the Black community was threatening the lives of white people.

But Mr. Turley, who had an attorney, told the courtroom that the men were just trying to protect me because he heard some white men say they were gonna lynch me.

The court fined them between $357 and $715.

Most of them couldn't pay, and they were sent to the chain gang.

Thomas is taken into custody.

He is held for a short time at the police station, but one of the things that's very different with the Thomas story is that there were members of the African American community that heard the rumblings that, oh, there's gonna be another lynching.

And so they were forming a group to try to protect Thomas because they knew what happened to Joseph McCoy and that protection never came for him.

So, initially, there were over 100 African Americans at the police station hoping to be able to protect him, but they were made to disperse.

But there are 15 African Americans that we call our heroes who really did try to stay and try to look out for him.

But eventually, they were arrested and so they were not able to assist.

And for those who tried to help Thomas, they eventually were put on chain gangs because they were arrested, charged exorbitant fees, and that they couldn't pay, so then since they couldn't pay any of the fees that were imposed on them, they ended up on the chain gang.

("Benjamin Thomas") Little Lillian Kloch stood on the witness stand.

She told the court that I was sittin' on the stairs just inside our doorway when she came over to get an ax.

She told 'em that I drew her toward me and pulled up her clothes.

(scoffs) I was there, and that's not what happened.

When do I get a say?

I'm innocent.

Officer Ferguson led me out of City Hall.

My hands were still cuffed as we walked several blocks down Saint Asaph Street to the jail on the corner of Princess.

A group of white boys followed behind us.

I heard them snickering and making threats behind my back.

We are standing in front of the old city jail, built on this site in 1827, when Alexandria was still a part of Washington, D.C.

This site is steeped in racial oppression.

(Walt) When I first moved here, I knew that this had been the jail.

I didn't know very much else about the jail other than the fact it had been a jail, and had been a jail from 1827 to about 1987.

I'd been in the house maybe eight or ten years when a friend of mine over at the public library told me that there was a book in the library that was a register of slaves being checked in and out of this house up through the Civil War.

So I went and looked at the book, and I didn't realize, I knew it was a jail, but I didn't realize that it act-- that it had been used to hold enslaved people, and that landowners, when they were leaving town and when the Union Army was coming across the river, to keep the slaves from escaping, they would lock them in here.

And they would basically check them in and check them back out.

So I saw the book, and I was disturbed by that history.

I didn't realize that happened.

I didn't know about that before.

Now we're in the front of the house, which is the only part of the jail that's original, the original jail building.

All the brick that's roughly the same color, these two homes, my main home, and the pool deck area, all that wall is the original jail wall.

So that's the original brick there.

And if you went all the way to the back, past the pool equipment and to the right, there's a dungeon area you can look down into, it drops down about 20 feet, with a lot of the original bricks and bar and soil from the jail building that was just dumped in there when they renovated.

This wall here was part of the original structure.

That was the thickness, and that's the thickness of the wall going down to the corner, around the end, and across the front, and for the next two houses.

("Benjamin Thomas") As the night wore on, what started as a few voices outside the jail grew into a rumble.

And by 11:00, more than 500 men crowded around the building, roaring for what they called "justice," and demanded the police hand me over.

The mayor said, if the jury didn't find me guilty, "I give you my word, as a man of honor, I will personally lead a mob tomorrow night to lynch Thomas."

It didn't work.

They threw him aside and a loud banging shook the walls.

No one was ever held accountable.

They never named a single person.

They protected each other.

And these were the town leaders, the businessmen.

They were denied their constitutional rights.

Let's be clear about what happened to them.

They were denied their constitutional rights and they were both murdered without judge, without jury.

Now, this isn't something that just happens then.

'Cause we understand that the problems in our criminal justice system still exist today.

(Sean) But you can apply so many incidents that have happened recently that might not look exactly the same but are similar, too similar, right?

Hold us accountable and know that we're committed to doing better.

The United States is a great country, but you look at what happens in countries around the world, there's a fine line between civil order and complete anarchy.

We need to keep an eye on the fact that people have treated each other poorly in the past, and that without constant vigilance, this will happen again, it could happen here.

Communities all across the country were dealing with this, and you see the formation of groups that impose terror.

And then you see the rights being pulled away slowly, slowly, and more restrictions being held.

And so that's where it's really difficult for African Americans to sort of gain a foothold.

And lynching and racial terror hate crimes are a way of control.

("Benjamin Thomas") They were ramming the jailhouse door with a long, heavy wooden board.

Gunshots rang out as police officers held their pistols out of windows, aiming towards the sky.

The lynchers didn't retreat.

They were inside the building.

But I was in the basement, holding my breath, hiding in a barrel full of fish.

The sound of boots on the wooden stairs meant they were on their way down to the cellar.

I held my breath.

The next thing I knew, the barrel tipped over.

The lid slid across the floor.

A piercing yell went up the stairs and out the doors and windows.

I was found.

The crowd outside cheered.

White hands pulled at me.

Cold metal weapons touched my skin as I was pulled and pushed up the stairs, and I tried to get away, but there was no way out.

(Audrey) A lot of lynchings were done where there were crowds of people, and they were a public spectacle.

Not only the angry mobs, but other parts of the community, respectable citizens in the community, were complicit in these crimes.

They would also bring their children to see this.

And then you'd have African American families who are seeing this and hoping it's not going to happen, and then seeing it and having their children see it.

My grandfather witnessed a lynching as a child, and it's really a horrible thing that stays with you.

And it stays in the back of your mind, and it's a way of keeping control, because you can't step too far out of line because you don't know what the repercussions will be.

And most likely for African Americans, they would be deadly.

("Benjamin Thomas") They threw me from the steps of the doors into the mass of white hands and feet.

That's when Officer Wilkinson drew his pistol and fired once.

(gunshot) The white sea parted.

I was on the bare ground, feet and hands pulled away from me.

I started to walk away, then to run.

A bullet hit me, but I kept movin'.

I ducked inside the doorway of a townhouse and pushed myself up against the wall next to the front door, trying to disappear.

But there were screams coming from inside the house.

"That's him!"

A rope wrapped around my chest.

It jerked.

I fell.

White boys held on the other end of the rope.

They ran the full length of Saint Asaph Street, dragging me behind.

The cobblestones battered me.

Over six long blocks, I was kicked and pelted with rocks and bricks.

I cried out, "Mama!"

But no one would be able to save me.

They hung me from a lamppost on the corner of King and Fairfax.

Officer Wilkinson cut me down.

(Audrey) They eventually end up at the corner of Fairfax and King Streets, and he is hanged from a lamppost there.

And when you think about that site today, it is across from our City Hall.

So as you're looking at our City Hall, our seat of justice, you can look across the fountain and the plaza to see the lamppost where a young 16-year-old boy was lynched on August 8th, 1899.

(Raalim) Lynching was something that they used to punish Black people and strip their dignity, and to let them know that, yes, although in theory you are supposed to have these constitutional rights, ultimately, you cannot legislate good will, and your rights mean nothing unless the government is prepared to protect you and to ensure that you have these constitutional protections.

Because otherwise, they are words on a paper.

And for too long they had been words on a paper.

(Audrey) It resonates so much, the fact that he calls out for his mother, very reminiscent of the death of George Floyd and his calling out, and the death of many African American men who call out for their mother in those last moments.

You see, for those of us who have been studying, we know that George Floyd is not a new situation, but it comes out of a history of oppression where they saw the police as an occupying force in their community that were brutalizing them and denying them their constitutional rights.

So I think that when you understand history in the continuum, it helps you to make meaning of your current situation.

There were some things done by people in these uniforms that was just not right.

- Just not right.

- You have to look deep down inside of yourself when something bad happens, when a law enforcement officer does something they just should not do, and you have to look and say, "Well, I need to take onus and responsibility for that."

And that's how you build trust.

You have to deal with it.

Because if you try to ignore it or say, "That's not my issue," or, "I don't do that," you won't change the culture.

And then Trayvon Martin.

And we had Tamir Rice.

And we had Michael Brown.

And I can go on and on and on of the different names of the males, and females, Breonna Taylor.

And the thing that struck me was, of course you knew about lynchings and you knew about the enslavement, and you knew about the women and children, but it really got into my soul that the kids that I'm teaching, 'cause McCoy was 18 and Thomas was 16, that these were young African American boys with their whole life ahead of them, and they were lynched for no reason.

It felt uncomfortable.

It was like spiders under the skin, especially knowing that not only was he my color, but he was my age.

From reading this, and like the whole experience itself, I discovered that I'm not only representing me when I'm out there, but also part of the Black community.

What happened to him, like, stripped him away of his opportunity for anything, whether he wanted to be a musician, artist, a chef, anything he could have been, he never got that opportunity.

They helped to build this nation, and their blood has been spilled on this soil.

Africans have been here long before many of the later groups of Europeans who came on Ellis Island.

If you were here before the nation was-- declared itself independent, then you were part of the fabric and the tapestry of the nation.

So, all citizens and all people should have been recognized for the equality they should have had, but we understand that that was not the case, right?

And when I look at these young Black males who are looking for direction, looking for affirmation, sometimes they look in the wrong places, but it's because they're not able to stare at the right faces.

It's important to be able to see yourself in the instruction.

It's hard to be what you can't see.

Very hard.

He was a teenager, and so therefore he had limited life experiences.

Didn't have children, never married.

And that really sat with me and resonated with me.

(soft, sentimental music) (man) The victim pleads but all in vain.

Their fury he could not restrain.

With murder stamped upon their brain.

Crying, "Take him out!"

Upon a lamppost now hard by, the furious mob did swing him high.

And left him all alone to die, without crying, "Take him out!"

♪ O!

Land of Liberty and might.

Can Justice look on such a sight, as on that memorable night when they took him out?

♪ (Audrey) When we had our pilgrimage where we took 165 people from the city of Alexandria, including students from Alexandria City High School, to Montgomery, Alabama, in October of 2022, it was such a moving, bonding experience, and it really showed the city's commitment.

Because not only were there students, there were residents, there were faith leaders.

Our mayor was there, our city manager was there.

Members of City Council.

We had therapists who were with us.

We had educators on diversity and equity.

So it was really an amazing group of people.

It was magical, really.

I mean, I don't think we could ever recreate that experience.

It just touched the soul of everybody who participated.

(Leslie) All of us, the chaperones and the students, we bonded like a family.

And I will never, ever forget that experience as long as I live.

(Raalim) I was inspired to provide any opportunities for students to be able to get outside of the classroom and to go and experience these things for themselves, because I know that experiential learning is critical, so that they can understand what happened, and, more importantly, what can they do about it.

The most powerful part of that pilgrimage to Montgomery was having the kids with us.

One of the most indelible memories for me of that weekend was, I was listening to them kind of looking at some of the exhibits and unpacking it all.

You know, you could tell it was, like, starting to click for them.

And then, they got to a picture of the basement of a building in Alexandria, and I remember hearing one of the kids saying, "Wait, wait, that's in-- that's in Alexandria.

That's--that's back home."

(Audrey) The student who came out of The Legacy Museum saying, "We don't know this history.

We are not learning this history, and we want to learn this history.

And it feels like a whole part of our education is missing."

And I think the city of Alexandria and the Alexandria City Schools have made that commitment to create a curriculum that delves into this history, and I'm very proud of that, and the fact that our students will be educated about this.

(Justin) It was so fascinating for me to just watch them kind of understand that the world was just so much smaller than they believed it to be.

It was such a-- kind of a pure conversation, in a way, to listen to, and hear them unpack it.

We were so glad that we did have counseling services on the trip, because the students really needed it so that they could process what was going on.

What I learned is that this is not something that I'm just teaching, that I'm also impacted by this history directly.

My family owns some land, and I asked my mother, "Are you thinking about maybe wanting to be buried on that land, or do you want to return to that land?"

She turned to me and said, and this is about a year before we went on the Remembrance Project, "If I never go back to North Carolina, it will be too soon, do you understand what I'm sayin'?"

And I said, "Oh, of course, Mom.

I mean, I just didn't know."

It's like I had this huge epiphany in this museum.

As I was walking around and we were, you know, looking at all the people that were lynched, and we were looking at the stones, I discovered there was one of my family members on the stone.

I actually called my mother, and I said, "Mom, I'm here in the museum.

I'm lookin'," I told her the name.

I said, "Is that why you don't wanna go back to North Carolina?"

And she said, "Well, now you know, and I still don't wanna talk about it."

It hit me.

It hit me why I was from Newark, New Jersey.

It--it hit me why we had abruptly left North Carolina.

And I was forever changed.

Because you know how we always refer to this great movement of people as the Great Migration, knock it off.

They were fleeing terror.

They were being lynched, and they were being killed, and they were leaving.

That's not a "Great Migration."

They were fleeing terror.

Many of them, and it hadn't even occurred to me, and I'm a historian, that many of them were leaving land that they owned.

Like my family.

These traumatic experiences for the family, they essentially left Alexandria.

I can't imagine that they would stay in a town that showed them such hatred.

(soft music) (group) We hold the 1899 leadership of Alexandria responsible for failing to protect Benjamin Thomas and for failing to prosecute the perpetrators.

We further hold Alexandria's white community of 1899 responsible for the racial terror, torture, and killing of Benjamin Thomas, the terrorizing of their Black neighbors, and their actions and inactions on August 7th and 8th.

We acknowledge that our predecessors failed this boy, his family, and betrayed their fellow citizens.

We hope to rectify this past injustice by giving back Mr. Thomas' story, telling the truth of our shared history, and by committing to a future Alexandria that welcomes diversity and provides equality and justice to all.

(Gretchen) The most recent remembrance that we held, you know, it was a hot summer day.

We did a marker unveiling, and we wanted to honor Benjamin Thomas by walking the route from the old jail to the lynching site.

We wanted to solemnly walk.

And students held up quotes that we had pulled out of the newspaper.

At the stroke of six when we started, there were more than 300 people in the street.

It was incredible.

I looked down to the audience, and it's a range of ages, and there's faith leaders, students, city government, you know, neighbors.

It really warms your heart that people care and they're interested, and that they want to make a difference, and they're supporting our committee and our city's commitment to do that.

I think I'm most proud that so many people in the community really care.

You know, it's not just historic Alexandria working on this project, it's the whole community.

Everybody who has been participating in the Community Remembrance Project is an ambassador to their friends, their families, their neighbors.

This is something that is beyond just learning about our history.

It's also about what does it compel you to do, what does it compel government to do, what does it compel community to do?

What are the lessons that we take from this?

My mouth is still gonna be out there advocating for kids, advocating for social justice, advocating for the people who feel marginalized, and I am not gonna stop doing that.

I'm not gonna stop making sure that the right voices are being heard.

And I'm here to make a contribution to a struggle that started centuries before my birth and will likely continue centuries after my death.

But I am here to make a contribution while I am here.

We have to come together and acknowledge, in this case, our past together, so we can grow.

Doesn't matter the pigmentation of their skin.

(soft, inspirational music) Doesn't matter the type of blood that they have.

♪ But make sure that your sight is influenced by the truth that we are all part of one human race.

And because of that, give one another the benefit of the doubt by simply showing kindness before you present judgment.

City government, the police department, the mayor let the community down and didn't protect the African American community, and especially Benjamin Thomas and Joseph McCoy.

(Don) This Remembrance Project is important.

It's so important that if we don't do it, we could actually get to a point where we forget.

And when we forget, then we decide sometimes in our minds that it wasn't that bad after all.

(Raalim) Even beyond these two young men that lost their lives due to this injustice and their denial of their constitutional rights, I think that there are many other stories to tell.

And as long as we are focused on the true history of our country, we can begin to change the future of our country.

The moment that we can figure out the mistakes that we've made in the past, the easier it will be to solve the problems that we will face in our future.

♪ (music softens, fades) ♪ (energetic, solemn music) ♪