Thanks to contributions from area residents, a push to raise enough money to place a marker on the gravesite of Milwaukee’s only lynching victim has succeeded.
Forest Home Cemetery has ordered the headstone for George Marshall Clark, a Black man who was hanged on Sept. 8, 1861, after an angry white mob dragged him from a city jail cell. Clark was buried that day in the 200-year-old cemetery without a headstone.
The cemetery partnered with a young activist to raise money for the grave marker; they reached the fundraising goal after a story about the effort appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
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It took Tyrone MackLee Randle Jr., two days to find it.
The 28-year-old artist and activist, along with two friends, combed Section 17 in the city’s largest and oldest cemetery looking for the final resting place of George Marshall Clark.
In the early morning hours of Sept. 8, 1861, Clark became Milwaukee’s only lynching victim. Clark was hastily buried that day in Forest Home Cemetery, somewhere in Section 17, a grassy knoll now dotted with 200-year-old trees. He was 24 years old, according to cemetery records.
That’s where Randle and his friends searched among a patchwork of graves, some marked by weather-beaten headstones, others unmarked, buried beneath the Earth. They made pencil rubbings to trace barely legible inscriptions, to no avail.
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Gravestone finally to be placed at burial spot of Milwaukee s only lynching victim
George Marshall Clark, killed in 1861, buried at Forest Home Cemetery Share Updated: 6:36 PM CDT May 13, 2021
Gravestone finally to be placed at burial spot of Milwaukee s only lynching victim
George Marshall Clark, killed in 1861, buried at Forest Home Cemetery Share Updated: 6:36 PM CDT May 13, 2021
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Show Transcript 160 YEARS. BUT AS KENT WAINSCOTT REPORTS, THAT WILL SOON CHANGE. KENT: AMONG THE HEADSTONES BEARING SOME OF MILWAUKEE’S MOST FAMOUS NAMES IS THE GRAVE OF SOMEONE OFTEN OVERLOOKED BY HISTORY, GEORGE MARSHALL CLARK, THE VICTIM OF MILWAUKEE’S ONLY LYNCHING. BUT CLARK’S GRAVE WAS NEVER MARKED. I THOUGHT IT WAS APPALLING. HOW DOES SOMEONE DIE LIKE THAT AND THEN THEY’RE JUST FORGOTTEN? KENT: TYRONE RANDLE SET OUT TO ENSURE PEOPLE REMEMBER CLARK AND HIS STORY. ACCUSED IN 1861 OF A MURDER HE DIDN’T COMMIT, CLARK WAS TAKEN BY A MOB
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