HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WHNT) — A Madison County man lynched in 1890 is being honored with a historic marker that was unveiled Saturday.
On March 21, 1890, Robert Mosley, a 20-year-old farmhand, was lynched. Historians are unsure if Mosley committed the crime he was accused of but they do know he never got a legal trial.
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William Hampton, the founder of Huntsville Revisited, said historical information on Mosley is limited.
“He had a short life so we don’t know a whole lot about him other than being a farm hand,” said Hampton. “He was a brother, he had a sister, Annie, a brother, Willie, he was the son of a local pastor as well.”
Hampton hopes the unveiling of the marker will help the community remember the dark but not-so-distant past.
“It helps us remember that there was time that when members of our society did not have equal justice, this is a reminder let’s not revisit that time period,” said Hampton. “It lets us know that these things did happen sometimes, a community in the case of Huntsville some don’t realize that we had issues here and this is a reminder that we had individuals here who did not believe that certain citizens had rights.”
The marker was a project by the Madison County Remembrance Project. It was a day, according to co-founder David Person, seven years in the making.
“It’s the culmination of seven years of hard work for something that we think has enormous value something that we believe will not only document a horrible historic occurrence,” said Person. “Something that will also give us an opportunity as a community to reckon with these kinds of evils hopefully in a way that will prevent them from happening in the future to anybody.”
Person said there is hope to honor fellow lynching victims from the Huntsville and Madison County area.
