Learotha Williams stands beneath a grizzled tree off Old Burkitt Road in Cane Ridge, eyes shaded by his sunglasses on a quiet March afternoon.
The tree’s trunk is hollowed out nearly entirely. It’s lost all but one of its branches, its remaining limbs twisting up toward the sky like a gnarled hand. The wooded area it stands in is sandwiched between a 24-hour gas station and new development, apartments and a church built in 2021.
It’d all be rather inconspicuous if not for the sign nearby, marking it as the site of Nashville’s last known lynching more than a century ago…