Chattanooga’s Ed Johnson memorial is set to be complete by early 2021, helping the city pay respect and learn from the darkest parts of its history.
The grouping of three statues designed by Georgia artist Jerome Meadows will depict Ed Johnson, a black man who was lynched from the Walnut Street bridge in 1906 after being accused of raping a white woman.
To many, the project will serve as a long-overdue recognition of Chattanooga’s history of racial injustice.
“What this means, this memorial and agreement and everything, is finally moving the black community forward,” Councilwoman Demetrus Coonrod, an early supporter of the project, said at Tuesday’s council meeting when the agreement to begin the project was passed. “Not just for the black community, but the city of Chattanooga … we’re still seeing now some of those exact same things happening currently with our judicial system.”
Referencing Alfred Blunt and Ed Johnson, black men lynched from the Walnut Street Bridge in the late 1800s and early 1900s, respectively, Coonrod said the memorial speaks to a greater theme of inequality in historical and modern justice, and should serve as starting point for more education on Chattanooga’s history.