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RES - 2023 - 030
<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 aftermath
<br /> 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 , women
<br /> and children by white individuals , vigilante mobs and law enforcement officers — to instill fear and to thwart the
<br /> social , economic and political advancement of Black people ; and
<br /> WHEREAS , on August 7 , 1869 , 19111,Iyear- old Washington Morrow and his older brother Nelson, both of whom
<br /> were African American farmworkers , were seized from the Hillsborough jail by a mob of masked klansmen ,
<br /> carried south of town , and then shot, with Washington dying from his wounds a few days later; and
<br /> WHEREAS , on September 6 , 1869 , Wright Malone , a Black farmer who was working alongside his father at the
<br /> family' s coal kiln, was abducted by four masked white men and hung near the banks of the Little River; and
<br /> WHEREAS , on October 14 , 1869 , Thomas Jefferson Morrow (whose son , Washington Morrow , was murdered
<br /> two months earlier) and his brother-in-law Daniel Morrow , both of whom were Black farmers working near
<br /> Hillsborough, were pulled from their family homes by a masked mob of Ku Klux Klan riders and hung; and
<br /> WHEREAS , on December 2 , 1869 , Cyrus Guy—a 20-year- old Afro - Indigenous farmer who had grown up in a
<br /> family emancipated long before the Civil War—was seized from his family farm by a mob of klansmen and hung
<br /> 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 mob of
<br /> white men , accused of eloping with a married white woman , and lynched from a dogwood tree near current day
<br /> Hatch Road and Old Greensboro Road , and the four men tried for the lynching were acquitted; and
<br /> WHEREAS , in denial of their constitutional rights to a fair trial , and without the opportunity to present their
<br /> 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 unnamed
<br /> individuals , including Washington Morrow , Wright Malone , Daniel Morrow , Thomas Jefferson Morrow , Cyrus
<br /> Guy, and Manly McCauley; and
<br /> BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Orange County Board of Commissioners now apologizes to all victims
<br /> of racial terror lynching in Orange County perpetrated or condoned by past Orange County elected officials ; and
<br /> BE IT MOREOVER RESOLVED that the Orange County Board of County Commissioners herewith expresses
<br /> our deepest sympathies to the families and descendants for all women and men who were murdered by racial
<br /> terror lynching, and for the denial of their dignity and basic human rights .
<br /> This the 18th day of April , 2023 . e
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<br /> Ja ezetta Bedford , Chair
<br /> I Orange County Board of Commissioners
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