137 years after Howard Cooper, a Black teenager, was terrorized and killed by a white mob, the state is investigating. It’s a critical step for healing to begin.
We ask that The Baltimore Sun take a harder look at not only how they encouraged and were complicit in acts of lynching that took place throughout Maryland, but also how this racial terror impacted the Black community.
May 9, 2021
Governor Larry Hogan issued a full posthumous pardon for 34 victims of racial lynching in Maryland between 1854 and 1933, on the basis that these extrajudicial killings violated fundamental rights to due process and equal protection of law. It is the first time in history that a governor has issued a blanket pardon for the victims of racial lynchings.
“The State of Maryland has long been on the forefront of civil rights, dating back to Justice Thurgood Marshall’s legal battle to integrate schools and throughout our national reckoning on race,” said Governor Hogan. “Today, we are once again leading the way as we continue the work to build a more perfect union. My hope is that this action will at least in some way help to right these horrific wrongs and perhaps bring a measure of peace to the memories of these individuals, and to their descendants and loved ones.”
Print Associated Press
Maryland s governor on Saturday posthumously pardoned 34 victims of racial lynching in the state dating between 1854 and 1933, saying they were denied legal due process against the allegations they faced.
It was a first-of-its-kind pardon by a governor of a U.S. state.
Gov. Larry Hogan signed the order at an event honoring Howard Cooper, a 15-year-old who was dragged from a jailhouse and hanged from a tree by a mob of white men in 1885 before his attorneys could file an appeal of a rape conviction that an all-white jury reached within minutes.
“My hope is that this action will at least in some way help to right these horrific wrongs and perhaps bring a measure of peace to the memories of these individuals and to their descendants and their loved ones, Hogan said.