Furman senior spearheads first lynching marker in Northwest Georgia

“We can’t remedy our history,” Emma Jones ’20, told The Chattanooga Times Free Press. “But we also, especially in the South, don’t often recognize our history and try to reconcile with that within our communities.”

Jones has led an initiative in Walker County, Georgia, her home, to erect a reconciliation memorial to Henry White, who was a 24-year-old coal miner when he was lynched by a mob there in 1916. She worked with community leaders to start the Reconciliation, Peace and Justice Memorial Task Force. Jones was inspired to act after visiting the National Memorial for Peace and Justice established by the Equal Justice Initiative, the newspaper wrote.