But for many of Chattanooga’s Black residents, the city’s beloved pedestrian bridge isn’t an architectural beacon of the New South, but a painful reminder of the old: Before the Walnut Street Bridge became a tourist draw, it was a lynching ground. In 1893 and again in 1906, enraged White mobs hanged Black men from the bridge.
“A lot of those people don’t know what happened on that bridge. In the White community, it wasn’t spoke out in the open so much” said Eric Atkins, a local activist who has worked to raise awareness of the killings and memorialize the victims. “In the Black community, you never forget one of these atrocities. You never forget a lynching.”
Even as the bridge became a central gathering place of the city, some Black Chattanoogans who know its history have refused to cross it.
“I really don’t feel comfortable walking the bridge,” said Donivan Brown, the chairman of a group spearheading the memorial effort. “I felt as if by walking across the bridge that it was some sort of affirmation of silence or the fact that it’s a playground now.”
Now, more than a century later, Chattanooga is taking a major step to acknowledge its dark racial history. This spring, it will unveil a monument at the southern entrance of the bridge to honor Black victims of white supremacy and recognize those who risked their lives to defend them.
At a time when Americans are reconsidering what is worthy of public memorialization — and removing statues across the country that commemorate those who fought to uphold systems of oppression against Black people — Chattanooga is aiming to identify new heroes to venerate.
The memorial, designed by artist Jerome Meadows, will mark the location where Ed Johnson, a Black man wrongfully accused of raping a White woman, was killed in 1906. Johnson had been convicted in a county court and sentenced to death. The lynching occurred after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a stay of execution. Johnson’s tragic end led to the first and only criminal trial in the Supreme Court’s history and affirmed its power to intervene in state and local affairs. In 2000, a Hamilton County judge formally cleared Johnson of wrongdoing.
The memorial features life-size statues of Johnson and two attorneys, Styles Hutchins and Noah Parden, Black men who appealed his case to the Supreme Court after White lawyers refused. Three other Hamilton County lynching victims, Charles Brown, Alfred Blount and Charles Williams, also will be memorialized. When completed, the memorial will be a part of a new plaza that city planners hope will become a space for public gatherings.
The memorial’s completion comes after years of effort from an interracial committee of volunteers called the Ed Johnson Project. Advocates for the memorial said they see it as an opportunity for people to not only consider the past but also pause to think about race relations in the United States today.