On January 17, 2022 the St. Louis Community Remembrance Project held a Soil Collection Ceremony remembering the January 17, 1894 lynching of John Buckner in Valley Park
Purpose
Equal Justice Initiative’s (EJI) Community Remembrance Project partners with community coalitions to memorialize documented victims of racial violence throughout history and foster meaningful dialogue about race and justice today. The Community Soil Collection Project gathers soil at lynching sites for display in haunting exhibits bearing victims’ names. These projects and the other engagement efforts that community coalitions develop intend to, “center the African American experience of racial injustice, empower African American community members who have directly borne this trauma, and invite the entire community to use truth to give voice to those experiences and expose their legacies.” The jars of soil collected at this ceremony will become part of memorial exhibits at EJI’s Legacy Museum in Montgomery, at the Griot Museum in St. Louis, and in the Missouri Community Remembrance Project Exhibit at the Black Archives of Mid-America in Kansas City, MO.
The Ceremony
The ceremony was held at Lower Buder Park, near the banks of the Meramec River, in the vicinity of the historic bridge (since replaced) where this racial terror lynching occurred.
Around two-hundred people braved the frigid winter temperatures and ongoing COVID-19 pandemic to join the coalition in remembering this historic lynching and its legacies in our region.
Photographs shared by participants in the Soil Collection Ceremony
Special Thanks
This remembrance event would not have been possible without the organizing efforts of the Reparative Justice Coalition and several individuals and groups in particular. Special thanks to: Margaret Holly, Nathan Schrenk, Meg Galindo and other coalition members on the Buckner Remembrance planning committee, and to coalition members and ceremony co-hosts Geoff Ward and Michelle Smith; to Tom Ott (Director) and Guinn Hinman (Historic Site Manager) and others who provided support through St. Louis County Parks; to our featured speakers and presenters: Dr. Sam Page, St. Louis County Executive; Wesley Bell, St. Louis County Prosecutor; Blake Strode, Exec. Director of ArchCity Defenders; Lois Conley, coalition member and founding director of the Griot Museum; Joyce Bell, Director of the Office of Racial Harmony for the Archdiocese of St. Louis; and Patty McMullen-Hellwig and Jeff Schulenberg from the Sacred Heart Valley Park Peace & Justice Ministry; and finally our coalition partners with the Community Remembrance Project of Missouri and Equal Justice Initiative.