© 2024 WUTC
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

How a Chattanooga Lynching Set a Supreme Court Precedent Involving the Bill of Rights

In this interview, I’m speaking with Illinois State University historian Dr. Amy Wood about the legacy of lynching in the South and a Chattanooga tragedy that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Dr. Wood is the author of Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940.

She visited the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga recently to talk about Ed Johnson, a black man falsely accused of raping a white woman in 1906. Johnson was lynched on the Walnut Street Bridge, and efforts are underway to create a memorial to this often-forgotten murder that had major legal implications for all of us.

On Tuesday, September 18, 2018 at 5:30 pm Eastern, Dr. Wood will speak at the University of the South about lynching. Watch a livestream of the event here.