The first state historical highway marker in Leesburg and Loudoun County memorializing a lynching victim was dedicated Wednesday, July 16.
State and local elected officials joined with members of the NAACP Loudoun Branch and the Loudoun Freedom Center in a ceremony at the site of the former Potter’s Field public burying ground, the present-day northeast corner of the intersection of East Market Street and Catoctin Circle.
That is the site where Charles Craven, a 25-year-old Black man, was lynched July 31, 1902. Craven was being held at the county jail on unrelated charges of murder and robbery when a mob of at least 300 armed men broke into the jail. Craven, who declared his innocence, was taken a half-mile away to the Potter’s Field, hanged from a tree, and attackers then fired hundreds of rounds of ammunition into his body…