Historical marker at site of pregnant woman’s lynching is removed, GA officials say
A historical marker at the site of a pregnant Black woman’s horrific lynching in Georgia was removed by officials last week after vandalsleft it severely damaged.
The marker observing Mary Turner and the Lynchings Rampage of 1918 has been riddled with as many as 27 bullet holes and more recently, was struck multiple times by “some kind of off-road vehicle,” Mark Patrick George, coordinator for the Mary Turner Project, announced Sunday.
Photos posted by the grassroots volunteer group show the marker badly cracked on both sides.
“Given that another small blow or two would have completely broken the marker off of the post, staff at the Georgia Historical Society and the MTP determined that we needed to remove it from the site before the marker plate was completely broken off from the post and potentially lost,” George wrote.
The marker, installed in Hahira, Georgia in 2010, honors the 13 victims in a string of lynchings across Lowndes and Brooks counties in May 1918, The Associated Press reported. Mary Turner, 21, years old and eight months pregnant, was among those killed.
Turner had spoken out against her husband’s murder and threatened “to swear out warrants for those responsible,” according to the Mary Turner Project. He was killed days earlier in a “lynching rampage” by an angry mob seeking revenge for the shooting death of a white farmer by a Black man.
For her outcry, “the mob tied Mary Turner by her ankles, hung her upside down from a tree, poured gasoline on her and burned off her clothes,” the MTP website states. “One member of the mob then cut her stomach open and her unborn child dropped to the ground where it was reportedly stomped on and crushed by a member of the mob.”
Turner’s body was repeatedly shot at before she and her baby were buried feet from where they were murdered.
Project officials said the historical marker will be stored until re-installment plans are made.
It’s unclear if authorities are investigating the latest vandalism incident.
This story was originally published October 12, 2020 at 4:55 PM with the headline "Historical marker at site of pregnant woman’s lynching is removed, GA officials say."