The latest Mississippi Freedom Trail marker honors the lives of Alma and Maggie Howze, two sisters who were among six Black citizens slain at the infamous “Hanging Bridge” near Shubuta in 1918.
The marker was unveiled by Visit Mississippi and the Mississippi Humanities Council during a ceremony on Monday. It featured remarks from Shubuta Mayor Cedric Chapman, Mississippi Humanities Council outreach officer John Spann, Emory University professor and author of “Hanging Bridge: Racial Violence and America’s Civil Rights Century” Dr. Jason Morgan Ward, actress Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, and civil rights advocate Sasha Taylor-Barnes.
On Dec. 20, 1918, a mob seized the Howze sisters, along with brothers Major and Andrew Clark, from the Shubuta jail and hanged them from a river bridge one mile north of town. 24 years later, in 1942, two teenage boys by the names of Ernest Green and Charlie Lang were lynched at the same site.
The tragic events galvanized the NAACP’s anti-lynching campaign and underscored the threats of racial violence faced by Black women and children during the Jim Crow era.
“The lynchings in Shubuta occurred during an early, yet pivotal moment in the Black struggle for freedom and equality in Mississippi,” a press release from Visit Mississippi said. “The victims and the site of their killings became powerful symbols in the national campaign against racial violence and hatred, linking this rural community to the broader Civil Rights Movement.”
The Mississippi Freedom Trail, established in 2011, includes more than 40 markers that commemorate the people, locations, and events that were pivotal in the struggle for civil rights among all Americans. For more information or to see where all the markers are located, click here.
