On Aug. 28, 1899, hundreds of Black residents of Alexandria, Virginia, gathered at Shiloh Baptist Church after a white mob lynched 16-year-old Benjamin Thomas. On Friday night, August 28, 2026, exactly 127 years later, I sat inside the same church as Alexandria gathered there again.
The same day, about 100 miles south, workers in Richmond were removing three Confederate memorials from Capitol Square, statues honoring Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, former Virginia governor and Confederate general William “Extra Billy” Smith, and Confederate physician Hunter Holmes McGuire.
The coincidence was difficult to ignore. In Richmond, Virginia was reconsidering whom it had placed on pedestals. In Alexandria, a community was remembering someone history nearly forgot…