The JMU farmers market has prevailed. Vendors from the market stationed outside The Union expressed gratitude that they re still there and that local business is rebounding as COVID-19 regulations are
Updated Mar. 2
Warning: The descriptions in this story and a photograph of a public lynching are graphic and disturbing.
Six years ago, a crew replacing light poles on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street found an engraved metal plate. It was a few feet off the ground, blackened with graffiti and hidden behind a planter bursting with bird of paradise, almost invisible.
âAt this intersection, Nov. 12, 1914, John Evans a black laborer from Dunnellon was lynched,â it said, âcondemned by a secret council of 15 of St. Petersburgâs most influential citizens, he was then turned over to a mob of 1,500 white residents and murdered.â