TBA Law Blog


Posted by: Azya Thornton on Mar 2, 2026

Nearly 120 years after a mob lynched Ed Johnson, he and other lynching victims have been memorialized with a historic marker in front of the Bessie Smith Cultural Center, according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press. In 1906, Johnson, a Black man, was lynched on the Walnut Street Bridge before a crowd of about 100 people after being falsely accused of rape and sentenced to death despite testimony supporting his innocence. The case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which issued a stay of execution, but Johnson was killed before it could be enforced. His conviction was posthumously overturned in 2000, and a memorial was installed on the bridge property in 2021. The new marker recounts Johnson’s story and the broader history of lynching in America, noting at least five documented lynching victims in Hamilton County and more than 375 in Tennessee between 1865 and 1950.