Tennessee town to mark iconic bridge's violent history with memorial to lynching victims

When it was first built, the Walnut Street Bridge in Chattanooga, Tenn., was meant to connect two communities living on either side of the Tennessee River: the predominantly white city in the south, and the larger Black workforce in the north. 

But the lynching of Black resident Ed Johnson in 1906 left a mark on this bridge that reminds people of their city's dark past.

"The Black community [could] never forget the lynching because of the trauma that it leaves behind," Eric Atkins told As It Happens host Carol Off.

Atkins is vice-chair of the Ed Johnson Project, where he and a group of volunteers have been promoting racial healing and reconciliation in Chattanooga. Since 2016, they have been advocating for the construction of a memorial to acknowledge the local lynching.

Now, the city is set to unveil a monument at the south entrance of the bridge this spring to mark the location where Johnson was killed.

The memorial will feature life-size statues of Johnson and his two attorneys, Black men who appealed his case to the U.S. Supreme Court after white lawyers refused. It will also honour three other lynching victims in the county: Charles Brown, Alfred Blount and Charles Williams.

Johnson's murder led to the first and only criminal trial in the U.S. Supreme Court's history. Sheriff Joseph Shipp, who had arrested Johnson, was found guilty.

"To have this particular case memorialized in this fashion, I think Abraham Lincoln's words are better now. It is 'fitting and proper' to do this, because of the historic legal precedents that were established," Atkins said.

The following is part of Atkins' conversation with As It Happens host Carol Off. 

The story of Ed Johnson, I want to know a bit about that. He was lynched on the Walnut Street Bridge, a very storied place in Chattanooga. How did he come to be murdered there? 

A young woman was walking in the St. Elmo district of the city one night, Nevada Taylor, and she was assaulted. 

From the reports that you get from some of the [newspapers], Ed Johnson was just one of the unlucky few that were lined up. In an inquiry ... he was the one that they charged with the rape of Nevada Taylor.

And she was a white woman.

Yes, she was a white woman. And [he was] charged with assault of her.

That was very typical in the South.... There were certain things that, as an African American, you could do and could not do. 

Remember, Emmett Till was killed [because] it was rumoured that he had whistled at a white woman. So even 50 years earlier than that, you can only imagine if somebody was charged and accused of a crime so heinous that there was going to be a lot of fury that occurred in the community. And that's basically what happened.

The trial documents show that it was just a complete miscarriage of justice. But Ed Johnson was sentenced to death. How did the case end up before the U.S. Supreme Court?

It was a last-minute appeal by his attorneys [Styles Hutchins and Noah Parden], who are quite noteworthy in their own right.

They would take on the case after his initial legal team thought that to go forward any more was frivolous. 

He had several appeals before the district court and the state-level courts. And so, once you keep making it up the appeal process, the highest authority is always the Supreme Court of the United States.

Parden would travel to Washington, D.C., and he would be granted a personal audience with Justice John Marshall Harlan. And Justice Harlan is most famous for his dissents, especially that in Plessy vs. Ferguson, when he said that the Constitution of the United States is colour blind and doesn't know or recognize classes amongst the races. And so he was able to get an audience before that justice, and Parden would board the train before he knew what the verdict of that would be. 

Ultimately, the Supreme Court did decide to take on the case. And when they decided [that], they immediately tried to telegraph Chattanooga and said that the execution would be stayed. In other words, you will not execute this prisoner until we've had a chance to review this case.

So ... there was a stay of execution that did not make people in Chattanooga happy, the white people. And the story of when he was taken from the jail and murdered on the bridge — lynched — shows that there was tremendous complicity, right? Even among the law authority there.

The No. 1 jailer at the bridge that night that he got lynched was an elderly gentleman in their 70s that the mob quickly dispelled. Locked him in a closet. And the sheriff also, coincidentally, wasn't in the vicinity at the time, even though they knew about the case. And so, yes, it was a lot of complicity that you could see in the case.

And then this bridge, where he was taken and hanged and shot — murdered. Now when you see that bridge, when Black people in Chattanooga look at that bridge, what do they see?

Today it represents a tourist attraction of sorts and it really is a symbol — one of the symbols of Chattanooga, just like Lookout Mountain and the Tennessee River.

But the bridge, to us, always represented a sign that some atrocities had happened not only to us, but against humanity. And so we can never forget that that wasn't the only lynching that occurred at the bridge. 

You have to remember that Alfred Blount was hung from the bridge in 1893. And a lot of the circumstances surrounding [his] lynching are eerily similar to that which befell Ed Johnson.

We could never just embrace the bridge as a happy, peaceful place. To us, it is a sign of mourning. 

So for the Black community in Chattanooga, this bridge and the area around it is a lynching ground. For white people in Chattanooga, it's a playground.... It's a walking trail. People take their photos. They get marriage pictures taken there. How difficult was it to get Chattanooga to agree to recognize this bridge as a memorial to Ed Johnson, that you have accomplished in doing?

There was some initial hesitancy. Like I said, lynching is not the most popular topic to talk about. 

It took a lot out of public outreach. A lot of education. A lot of civic engagement.

We had one of our group members, Linda Duvoisin, [who] came up with a documentary. And one thing that we use with that, is that we were able to have 50 public gatherings where we talked about the Ed Johnson case, but people were actually able to view it visually, and then they would have discussions over some of the things that happened in the case that they were able to visualize.

So it took two or three years of effort just to get the public will and backing. You never get it 100 per cent. But overall, I think that intensive campaign of public education, outreach and civic engagement is what we have to really conduct first to get public backing. 

At the same time, you know, we're having discussions over the relevance of a lot of memorials in the United States, whether it be confederate memorials or other people that should be memorialized.

Written by Mehek Mazhar. Interview produced by Niza Lyapa Nondo. Q&A edited for length and clarity.