In Remembrance, Reconciliation and Healing

THE ED JOHNSON MEMORIAL

By Chuck Wasserstrom

LaFrederick Thirkill is a lifelong storyteller, historian and educator, but even he didn’t know the story.

Growing up in Chattanooga, Thirkill knew that the Walnut Street Bridge—a popular pedestrian path for locals and visitors—had a dark secret. A lynching happened on the bridge more than a century ago, but names and circumstances were seemingly forgotten.

But dots became connected as a result of a newspaper article in 1999 about Pleasant Garden Cemetery, an abandoned graveyard in Chattanooga’s Shepherd community.

“I was amazed to read that there was this Black cemetery that I had never heard of,” says Thirkill, a 1997 graduate of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. “Being a lover of history, and Black history in particular, I wanted to go to this place.”

Thirkill saw that Pleasant Garden, which had operated from 1891 to 1970, had fallen into a state of disrepair. There he observed that the cemetery is the final resting spot of—among others—Lula F. Kennedy, the first Black music teacher in Chattanooga; Dr. Thomas William Haigler, one of the area’s first Black surgeons; John Louis Brown, the great-grandfather of singer Lionel Richie; and Thirkill’s own great-grandfather, Willis Orr.

After seeing the cemetery’s conditions, Thirkill set out to clean it up.

“It was just a simple desire to reclaim the dignity of the lives buried in that abandoned cemetery because I felt that it was just so disrespectful to have such a historic cemetery lying in such disarray,” he says.

“I never dreamed that in doing that, I would learn the story of Ed Johnson.”

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Ed Johnson’s story is not easy to summarize. In 1906, Johnson—a 24-year-old Black man—was unjustly convicted of raping a white woman and sentenced to death. When the U.S. Supreme Court intervened with a stay of execution as a result of the first and only criminal trial in the Supreme Court’s history, a mob of white people stormed the jailhouse in Chattanooga, took Johnson and—despite his maintaining his innocence—hanged him from the Walnut Street Bridge.

The case was largely unknown, especially among white residents, until the 1999 publication of Mark Curriden and Leroy Phillips Jr.’s book “Contempt of Court: The Turn-of-the-Century Lynching That Launched a Hundred Years of Federalism.”

Thirkill’s early trips to Pleasant Garden coincided with the release of the book.

“We scheduled the first cleanup,” Thirkill says, “and while we were there, Leroy Phillips came over to me and introduced himself. He said, ‘Come on young man, I want to show you something.’ He walked me to the burial site of Ed Johnson and began to tell me the story.”

Phillips, a longtime Chattanooga criminal defense attorney, brought Thirkill to the tombstone inscribed with Johnson’s final words: “God bless you all. I AM a innocent man.”

“Even after their book came out, there didn’t seem like enough people knew this story,” Thirkill says. “The baton was passed to me. From that point, I felt that not only was it my responsibility to learn this story, but it was now my responsibility to share the story.”

Thirkill wrote the play, "Dead Innocent: The Ed Johnson Story." He established the Ed Johnson Memorial Scholarship Fund. He met with schools and organizations and even gave tours as a cemetery docent to help educate them about the life of Johnson and the historical value of the burial ground.

LaFrederick Thirkill recounts Ed Johnson’s story and the work to preserve it.

Crowds gather for the Ed Johnson Memorial dedication.

Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly

Artist Jerome Meadows unveils his sculpture with the help of two students from Howard High School.

Members of the Chattanooga Choral Society for the Preservation of African American Song lead attendees on a walk across the Walnut Street Bridge.

Eddie Glaude Jr., chair of the Center for African American Studies and of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University, delivers the keynote address at the Ed Johnson Memorial dedication. Seated are LaFrederick Thurkill (left) and Donivan Brown.

He says he recognized right away that not everyone is pleased to be reminded about the past. “Some might say, ‘Well, that happened forever ago,’” he says, “but forever ago is still connected to someone’s family history.”

“I remember being in a barbershop one day back when I first started cleaning up the cemetery,” Thirkill recalls, “and the guys in the barbershop started asking questions about it. One guy said to me, ‘Who gave you the right to go up in the cemetery starting trouble? Why don’t you just let sleeping dogs lie?’

“I asked him, ‘Who gave you the right to deny me the story? I don’t see them as dogs, and I think it’s a shame that we’ve let the cemetery become abandoned.’ It’s like they had forgotten about the significance and contributions of the people who were buried there.”

In 2016, Thirkill became co-chair of a committee brought together to discuss paying tribute to Johnson’s memory. The interracial group, known as The Ed Johnson Project, has spent years working to erect a permanent memorial commemorating Johnson’s lynching. They wouldn’t let Johnson’s story fade from memory.

“History doesn’t compete with itself; it is what it is,” Thirkill says. “We have to tell the honest stories and the truthful stories. We have to make sure that we acknowledge what happened.”

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On Sept. 19, the Ed Johnson Memorial dedication took place with the ceremonial unveiling of bronze sculptures honoring Johnson and his Black attorneys, Noah Parden and Styles Hutchins—who appealed his case to the Supreme Court after white lawyers refused.

Despite persistent rain—which event chair Donivan Brown declared “tears of joy from heaven”—more than 200 people turned out for the event, at which Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly read a proclamation of apology from the city for the 1906 miscarriage of justice against Johnson. Keynote speaker Eddie Glaude Jr., chair of the Department of African American Studies at Princeton University, acknowledged the rarity of communities coming together to recognize, “A profound wrong, a wrong that haunts.”

“Over 100 years later though it may be,” Glaude said to those gathered at the south end of the bridge, “this act to remember Ed Johnson, what happened on that fateful day, helps clear the path for a different way of being together here in Chattanooga.”

Artist Jerome Meadows created the statues of Johnson, Parden and Hutchins, and he revealed them with the help of Howard High School students.

Thirkill says some memorials are designed to evoke an emotion. The Ed Johnson Memorial is intended to educate.

“Seeing Ed Johnson walking away from the noose and being set free—or being just beyond the reach of the justice system—is beautifully illustrated in this memorial,” Thirkill says. “I know there are going to be people who might be upset about it, be it Black people who are upset that it happened or white people who are upset that it’s acknowledged.

“But those conversations are healthy because then you can examine why you have those feelings; and when conversations happen, it gives you the opportunity to see it from a different perspective.”

Stacy Lightfoot, UTC vice chancellor for diversity and engagement and a native of Chattanooga, has long been part of the Johnson memorial conversations. She recognizes there are people who may not like hearing about history that isn’t pleasant to hear, “but it’s important to learn so we can have empathy for others.”

“One of the missions of this memorial is to create this space of reconciliation and healing,” Lightfoot says. “This memorial provides an opportunity for me to teach my son how far we’ve come because that history isn’t taught anywhere else. It allows me to stop at the monument and talk to him about what life was like for his great-grandfather and my mother and her brothers and sisters who grew up in a segregated Chattanooga.

“This will be a good prompt for conversations, an ‘a-ha’ moment, for those who don’t know the history—but could benefit from learning and understanding it so they know how to move on.”

With the memorial in place and Johnson’s story now being told via multiple platforms, Thirkill says his life commitment to educating people about the life of Johnson will continue. He says it’s important that others learn the story to continue to fight against injustice.

“I could be Ed Johnson or anybody who looks like me could be Ed Johnson. So for me, it’s personal as a Black man to help make sure that we know this story and understand how it happened to prevent it from happening again,” Thirkill says.

“I’m blessed that God allowed me to be the vessel through which he sent this project. I’m thankful that I had the opportunity to learn the story, go out and share it and get the chance to see this memorial come to life. I’m thankful I had the opportunity to be a part of this experience.”

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Earlier this year, 12 students in the UTC Honors College recorded this critical chapter in Chattanooga’s history. A five-part serial podcast titled "We Care Now: A Podcast for Ed Johnson" was created as part of a semester-long course called Storytelling Through Podcasts, led by instructor Will Davis.

“This was a hard story to hear and an even harder story to tell,” Davis says. “We approached it as storytellers telling a true-crime podcast, and we divided the student group into producers, editors and writers.”

The class worked together identifying the people who were going to be interviewed and the questions to be asked. Davis took those queries into the podcast lab and conducted extended interviews with LaFrederick Thirkill, studio artist/memorial creator Jerome Meadows, Ed Johnson committee chair Donivan Brown and performing artist Nicole Coleman.

“Those interviews were very impactful for me to listen to,” Davis says, “and I learned as much during the class as I taught. It was an emotional story, and we didn’t shy away from that. We went with our instincts; if it sounded right and authentic, we went with it. And I think it worked.”