Lynching of Christopher Davis

Christopher C. Davis was a Black man who lived near Albany, Ohio with his wife and two children. He worked as a farm laborer. In 1881, he was accused of raping a white woman, after which he was arrested. While in jail in Athens, Ohio, before his trial, a mob of White men broke into the jail and lynched him by hanging him from a bridge over the Hocking River. None of the White men were indicted of a crime.

Accusation and lynching On October 30, 1881, a white woman who lived near Davis, Lucinda Luckey, reported that she had been raped and assaulted. None of the men who killed him were charged, and members of the mob included community leaders. An 1883 publication that recounted the lynching said, "No one has ever been brought to justice for complicity in it. In fact, public sympathy was so strong that little effort was made to investigate the facts."

Legacy

In 2019, members of several local organizations created the Christopher Davis Community Remembrance Project in partnership with the Equal Justice Initiative. In fall of 2019, they held a remembrance event for Davis by the bridge where he was killed, collecting soil from the base of the bridge with an attendance of over 300 people. In 2020, a historical marker was added to Mulberry Street in Athens, near the site of the bridge, to memorialize Davis.