More Perfect UNION
In the Shadow of Old Joe The mayor of Newberry on his town’s work to acknowledge— and heal from—its tragic racial past. By Jordan Marlowe
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lachua County, home to Gainesville and the University of Florida, sits in the middle of North Central Florida. As a college town, Gainesville is a blue dot on the region’s deep-red political map. I live in that deep-red area, in Newberry, a small rural community roughly 15 miles west of Gainesville. The inherent tension created by our political geography occasionally draws Newberry into larger national conversations, and that happened in 2016 when a reporter called asking me why I was opposed to removing Confederate statues.
PHOTO BY JORDAN MARLOWE
Wynne shot him, he fired back in self-defense. Harris testified that Long opened fire on Wynne and him after Wynne instructed Long to get dressed. Six shots were exchanged. Long and Harris were wounded superficially, but Wynne was critically wounded and died later that morning. Long fled, and the county sheriff formed a posse. They hunted down Long’s half-brother James Dennis and killed him with a shotgun blast to his back. They jailed five other members of the Dennis family—three men and two women, one of them Long’s wife—on charges of helping Long escape. In the predawn hours of August 19, a mob of 200 abducted the prisoners from the jail I was the mayor-elect of Newberry, and I was confused by and hanged them from an oak tree, claiming their deaths would the question. In Gainesville, a Confederate statue known as “Old “encourage” other Joe” had recently African Americans been removed in the community to from the Alachua reveal where Long was County courthouse hiding. The bodies were grounds by the left hanging until the county commission. afternoon, drawing But I had never hundreds of onlookers. taken a stance The next morning, on Confederate Long turned himself in statues, and to protect the rest of his Newberry family and friends. Two doesn’t have any. months later, he stood Undeterred, the trial in Gainesville, and reporter asked after deliberating seven whether Newberry minutes, the all-white jury should participate pronounced him guilty. in the process He was hanged on the of truth and grounds of the Gainesville reconciliation—a jail, two blocks from the term new to me— Confederate soldier, Old that the county Joe. commissioners After the lynchings, were launching to everyone in the mob swore address historic to keep silent about what racial injustice. had transpired, walking Her question Newberry residents looking at the monuments in the National Lynching Memorial in forward and touching one was aimed at Montgomery, Alabama. of the lynching ropes as Newberry because they made their oaths. The coroner ruled that all five had died from our town has a tragic racial past. Around 2 a.m. on August freak accidents, including falling from a tree or running into a fence. 18, 1916, George Wynne, Alachua County deputy sheriff and For more than 80 years, the event seemed to vanish from history. In constable of Newberry, accompanied by a young pharmacist 2003, the late University of Florida professor Patricia Hilliard-Nunn named Lem Harris, tracked down a Black man they believed had began researching what had happened to the victims, who came stolen hogs. They found their suspect, Boisy Long, hiding in a to be known as the Newberry Six. But for most of the public, the shack in the pine woods outside of town and told him he was details remained shrouded in silence. under arrest. The reporter’s call was the first time I had been asked about Two versions of what happened next survive. At his trial, Long those lynchings, or about any question of race, and my answer was claimed that Wynne and Harris had tried to kill him, and after
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