“This happened in our country and we can’t erase it.” A southeast Ohio museum displays soil from lynching sites

Today from the Ohio Newsroom, remembering tragic history. Support comes from the James at Ohio State, cancer. For some, it's one of life's fiercest foes, but not at the James, where a team of nearly 300 specialists and over 1,500 researchers are working together to create a cancer-free world. I'm Claire Roth. Plaques, exhibits, and historical sites across the state commemorate Ohio's significant role in the Underground Railroad. A whole museum in Belmont County is dedicated to that portion of the state's past. Now that museum is debuting a new exhibit, exploring the history of racial violence in Ohio. The Ohio newsroom's Caitlin Thorn reports. A warning, this story contains graphic details of lynching and other violence. On a small shelf in an old brick building in Belmont County sit 14 jars of soil. Christina Estell reads their labels. Cleveland, Sandusky, Galleon. Each also bears the name of an Ohio man and contains dirt from sites across the state where Ohioans lynched them. Estelle is the director of the Underground Railroad Museum, where the jars are on temporary display before the museum moves into its new home in Morristown, eight miles down the road this fall. Estelle and Museum Board Director Anthony Atkins drove out with trowels to collect soil samples from each of the lynching locations earlier the summer. In addition to the soil, the exhibit will tell the stories of each man's life and murder, like Henry Howard, a black man from Florida who traveled to Kashokton for a mine job in 1885. The day after he arrived in town, he was accused of assault, and then, without evidence or trial, a community mob lynched him. And most of these were on the lawns of courthouses. They were spectacles. They would attract crowds of thousands. For Henry Howard, they actually chopped off fingers and toes and kept them as souvenirs. His toe was displayed in a jewelry store for decades. In the era of American slavery, Ohio was a free state and a major point on the Underground Railroad. dotted across the state are plaques marking stops and notable conductors who helped countless people seek freedom in the North. Estelle believes this view of Ohio can make it easy for people to ignore the history of racial violence in the state. But a lot of people think lynching is a thing of the South. They have no idea that it occurred here in Ohio. Because it shows us, it tells us that white supremacy wasn't just a regional thing. White supremacy was a national belief system that manifested itself in different regional ways. Hassam Kwami Hakeem Jeffries is an associate professor of history at the Ohio State University. Jeffrey says racism was baked into Ohio's foundation from the beginning. In the first years of Ohio statehood, black residents were required to prove their freedom with a certificate and convinced two white landowners to put up a so-called good behavior bond and pay $500 if the newcomer got into legal trouble. In the last 18 months, the Trump administration has taken a number of actions to de-emphasize certain chapters of American history. Directing the Department of Interior, for instance, to ensure monuments, statues, or memorials do not inappropriately disparage Americans and instead focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people. But?

That hasn't deterred Estill from telling the story of Ohio's less heroic past. Hi, welcome. If you guys wouldn't mind filling out this visitor form for... The museum in Flushing gets around 11,000 visitors per year. Overall, visits are down from previous years. Estill says the museum used to be a popular field trip destination for public schools, but last year... They didn't host one. She believed schools may feel pressure from the federal government's directives and from Ohio laws, like last year Senate Bill 1, which banned diversity and equity programming in higher education. Jeffrey says it's easy to love stories about the past that make us feel comfortable. But they're not the only thing we should be learning. We're talking about racial violence and racial terror and lynching and slavery. You should be uncomfortable. This isn't the Disney version of America's past. This is American history. Jeffrey says that discomfort allows us to understand the past and move forward to the future. Estelle agrees. With its new forever home in Morristown, she hopes the museum will help Ohioans see a more complete view of the state's past and see equality as a challenge for the presence. For the Ohio Newsroom in Belmont County, I'm Caitlin Thorne. That's all today from the Ohio Newsroom. We'll talk with you tomorrow.