Marker dedication pays tribute to 3 Black men lynched 140 years ago in Lawrence

By Tricia Masenthin, The Lawrence Times

A ceremony Friday on the north side of Lawrence City Hall honored the lives and memory of three Black men who were murdered by a white mob atop the Kansas River bridge on June 10, 1882.

Early that morning, Isaac King, George Robertson and Peter Vinegar were dragged from the Douglas County Jail to the middle of the Kansas River Bridge and hanged over its side by an angry mob of more than 100 white men. No members of the lynch mob were ever charged or faced any legal consequences for the murders.

For years, the men’s bodies were buried in unmarked graves in Potter’s Field, at the northeast corner of Oak Hill Cemetery. In 2021, City of Lawrence employees discovered a cemetery plot chart that included their names. And now a historical marker west of City Hall does too.

Ursula Minor, president of the Lawrence, Kansas Branch of the NAACP, told members of the crowd the memorial project took root in 2019 within the local NAACP chapter. More than two years later, they would honor the men “standing together as a community” near the site of their deaths.

The original article explains how the men were honored.

We also honor the victims of lynching.

More breaking Black news.