More than 150 people gathered in Rockville on a sunny Veteran’s Day to dedicate historical markers...
... recognizing the lynching of Mr. John Diggs-Dorsey in 1880 and Mr. Sidney Randolph in 1896. The ceremony was held in front of the County Council Office Building, formerly the County jail, where both men had been held before they were dragged to their deaths.
Rev. Dr. Ruby Reese Moone, 85, shared her life story, rising from poverty in rural Georgia to prominence as a leading civil rights activist in Montgomery County. She and her late husband worked with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., helping to organize the Selma-to-Montgomery march and the 1963 March on Washington. She urged the crowd to take action and to keep pushing for racial justice, a major theme of the day.
Many MoCoLMP members attended and were recognized from the podium by Jason Green, head of the Montgomery County Commission on Remembrance and Reconciliation, which organized the event. Other attendees were Will Schwarz, president of the Maryland Lynching Memorial Project, and several elected officials, among them County Council members Will Jawando and Andrew Friedson and County Executive Marc Elrich. In his remarks, Elrich noted that, unlike jurisdictions that reject the teaching of “critical race theory,” Montgomery County is not afraid to face its history, including plantations, slavery, segregation, and lynchings. “Slavery is not a ‘theory,’” he said. “It is a fact.”
Jason Green, Chair of the Commission, urged people to take concrete steps to help the community move forward on reconciliation. “This is not a spectator sport,” he said.
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