Press release from Alachua County
ALACHUA COUNTY, Fla. – The Alachua County Community Remembrance Project committee (ACCRP), the Alachua County Commission, and the UF Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere, with support from the Rothman Fund, recently unveiled the “Soil Collection Jar Exhibit Honoring Victims of Lynching.”
Watch a video of the Soil Collection Jar Exhibit Unveiling .
The County Commission has dedicated space on the ground floor of the County Administration Building (12 SE 1st St., Gainesville) for this poignant exhibit on racial violence. Each jar contains soil collected at known sites where lynching took place.
“This is about telling the story of what happened to African Americans, and telling that story is a part of American history,” said County Commissioner Charles “Chuck” Chestnut IV. “It’s about knowing the true history so that we can move forward and grow stronger as a community.”
This exhibit is part of the ongoing effort to confront and understand the history of racial violence in Florida, a state with the highest rate of lynchings per capita between 1882 and 1930. The Soil Collection Jar Exhibit highlights this painful history and addresses the legacy of racial inequity that persists today.