Soil Collection Ceremony Hosted in Memory of George Smith
By Anuska Dhar & Dawaune Hayes
Community members scoop soil from Douglas County into jars that will be displayed in Omaha and in Montgomery, AL, at the Equal Justice Initiative. Photo: Dawaune Hayes
The Omaha Community Council for Racial Justice and Reconciliation (OCCRJR) honored the life of George Smith through a soil collection ceremony that took place on Friday, October 23. OCCRJR is a network of organizations and citizens who are working together to raise awareness about the community’s history of racial violence and injustice, and this event was just one of multiple efforts to share the stories of and commemorate victims of lynching.
In 1891, George Smith was arrested after being wrongly accused of raping 5-year-old Lizzie Yeates. On Oct. 10, a mob seized Smith from the county jail, brutally beat him, and dragged him to the Douglas County Courthouse, where he was then hanged from a streetcar wire at the northeast corner of 17th and Harney Streets.
Excerpts from “A Dirty, Wicked Town: Tales of 19th Century Omaha” vividly recount the details of George Smith and the racist mob that lynched him.
The George Smith soil collection ceremony took place at the Martin Luther King Jr. Plaza outside the Douglas County Courthouse and Civic Center. The ceremony included comments from Vicki Young of the Omaha Chapter of the NAACP, a poetry reading from Pastor Darryl Brown Jr., and a community reading of Chapter 20 of the book, "A Dirty, Wicked Town: Tales of 19th Century Omaha," which covers the story of George Smith.
NOISE Founder and Community Director, Dawaune Hayes, read an excerpt from said book, powerfully repeating the haunting words of George Smith who cried out before being overtaken by the crowd once more, “Am I guilty? Am I guilty? No, I am not! I am the man that was arrested but I am innocent! I am innocent!” The reading was closed out by words from the author himself, David L. Bristow.
Community members were invited to deposit soil from the courthouse grounds into jars labeled with George Smith’s name and alias, Joe Coe, in recognition of this history. The filled jars will be displayed locally by the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama as part of the Douglas County Community Remembrance Project.
You can learn more about OCCRJR and their work by visiting their Facebook page here.