MOUNT STERLING, Ky. (LEX 18) — James Mitchell was a Black man born in Mount Sterling in the mid-1800s, just before the Civil War.
A community historian, Valerie Scott, describes Mitchell’s life, "He worked on a farm he lived with his family, he had siblings, and he was a hard worker."
Now, more than 140 years later, Mitchell is remembered for the way that he died in Mount Sterling’s community.
Genealogist with Past Generations LLC, Vicki Wells Cox, says, "On June the 14th 1882, Mr. Mitchell was at work."
She explains that around lunchtime, there was an altercation, "According to the victim, the alleged victim, with a white woman."
The Sheriff brought Mitchell to the jail downtown. Cox says later that night, he was taken out. "At 9:00 that night with five masked gunmen…. At that point they took him to the railroad trestle, which was in one of two locations."
Valerie Scott is leading the project, uncovering Mitchell’s death and working to memorialize him. She’s a chairperson on the Montgomery County Equal Justice Initiative Committee and has been working with several organizations, learning more about Mitchell’s story.
Mitchell is one of more than 800 names engraved at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama. Those columns mark the lives of African Americans lynched across the country between 1877 and 1950.
Scott says the experience was, "It was just absolutely almost traumatizing, if I was to be honest about it...traumatizing. And then on top of that to talk in there Montgomery County, Kentucky."
Nearly every community represented at the museum and memorial also has a jar of soil from the area where victims were hanged.
Saturday, soil from the Mount Sterling sites will be poured into a jar memorializing James Mitchell’s life. It will then be sent to the museum in Alabama, where it will sit next to hundreds of other jars.
Cox says, "I think Montgomery County has done a better job than most counties—especially in Kentucky—bringing the Black community and the white community together in healing."
Scott and Cox say projects like this are a reminder.
"I’m fearful that some in the older generation may have forgotten some of the lessons that they learned when they were younger and I’m also fearful that the younger generation is not being exposed,” says Cox.
At Saturday’s ceremony, Scott wants people to leave with feelings of peace and forgiveness.
She says, "The whole process is healing it's about change, it's about understanding, and it's about inclusion and that is what we want them to walk away with."
