Families torn apart. Communities torn apart. Loss of land. Loss of businesses. Loss of history. There’s a legacy that lives on. —Shirah Dedman
In 1912, Thomas Miles, Sr., a black business owner in Shreveport, Louisiana, was accused of giving a note to a white woman. In response, a white mob lynched him with impunity, hanging him from a tree and riddling his body with bullets. Fearing for their lives, his wife and son fled to California and even changed the spelling of their last name (from Miles to Myles) to distance themselves from the tragedy.
The Dedman/Myles family had not been back to the South in more than one hundred years. This past January, Shirah Dedman, her mother, Phoebe Dedman, and her aunt Luz Myles returned to Shreveport, seeking answers about their grandfather’s life and death. “Growing up, I had zero want to go to the South,” Shirah Dedman said. “But now I feel like we need to go see where we came from.”
Numerous markers honoring the Confederacy remain in Shreveport today, yet there are no markers paying tribute to the victims of racial terror lynchings. While in Shreveport, the family visited the site where their grandfather was lynched, and participated in a soil collection to commemorate him. This is one of many soil collections EJI is facilitating at lynching sites across this country, as they work to build a lasting and more visible memory of our history of racial injustice.
Click here to hear their story, and explore The Legacy of Lynching at the Brooklyn Museum now through September 3.
Original photography by Rog Walker and Bee Walker for the Equal Justice Initiative) 2017.
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