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RES-2023-030 DRAFT 3
<br /> ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
<br /> RESOLUTION APOLOGIZING FOR PAST RACIAL TERROR LYNCHING
<br /> WHEREAS, racial terror lynching occurred with startling frequency across the United States in the
<br /> aftermath of the Civil War and from Reconstruction through the middle of the twentieth century; and
<br /> WHEREAS, lynching became a practice predominantly inflicted upon Black or African American men,
<br /> women and children by white individuals, vigilante mobs and law enforcement officers — to instill fear and
<br /> to thwart the social, economic and political advancement of Black people; and
<br /> WHEREAS, on August 7, 1869, 19-year-old Washington Morrow and his older brother Nelson, both of
<br /> whom were African American farmworkers, were seized from the Hillsborough jail by a mob of masked
<br /> klansmen, carried south of town, and then shot, with Washington dying from his wounds a few days later;
<br /> and
<br /> WHEREAS, on September 6, 1869, Wright Malone, a Black farmer who was working alongside his father
<br /> at the family's coal kiln,was abducted by four masked white men and hung near the banks of the Little River;
<br /> and
<br /> WHEREAS, on October 14, 1869, Thomas Jefferson Morrow (whose son, Washington Morrow, was
<br /> murdered two months earlier) and his brother-in-law Daniel Morrow, both of whom were Black farmers
<br /> working near Hillsborough, were pulled from their family homes by a masked mob of Ku Klux Klan riders
<br /> and hung; and
<br /> WHEREAS, on December 2, 1869, Cyrus Guy—a 20-year-old Afro-Indigenous farmer who had grown up
<br /> in a family emancipated long before the Civil War—was seized from his family farm by a mob of klansmen
<br /> and hung in a public site near the intersection of Faucette Mill Road and Lebanon Road; and
<br /> WHEREAS, on or about October 30,1898, Manly McCauley, an 18-year-old Black man, was seized by a
<br /> mob of white men, accused of eloping with a married white woman, and lynched from a dogwood tree near
<br /> current day Hatch Road and Old Greensboro Road, and the four men tried for the lynching were acquitted;
<br /> and
<br /> WHEREAS, in denial of their constitutional rights to a fair trial, and without the opportunity to present
<br /> their defense, the afore-mentioned men were brutally executed; and
<br /> WHEREAS, Orange County elected officials failed to safeguard Washington Morrow and failed to hold
<br /> accountable the killers of the six racial terror lynching victims;
<br /> NOW THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the Orange County Board of Commissioners does hereby
<br /> acknowledge that criminal acts of racial terror lynching were committed against numerous named and
<br /> unnamed individuals, including Washington Morrow, Wright Malone, Daniel Morrow, Thomas Jefferson
<br /> Morrow, Cyrus Guy, and Manly McCauley; and
<br /> BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Orange County Board of Commissioners now apologizes to all
<br /> victims of racial terror lynching in Orange County perpetrated or condoned by past Orange County elected
<br /> officials; and
<br /> BE IT MOREOVER RESOLVED that the Orange County Board of County Commissioners herewith
<br /> expresses our deepest sympathies to the families and descendants for all women and men who were
<br /> murdered by racial terror lynching, and for the denial of their dignity and basic human rights.
<br /> This the 18th day of April, 2023.
<br /> Jamezetta Bedford, Chair
<br /> Orange County Board of Commissioners
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