Parkesburg Yesterday - Continued

This brief interview of Dennis Downey, Millersville professor and author of the book "Coatesville and the Lynching of Zachariah Walker," provided courtesy of the Daily Local News, offers an historian's perspective of the importance of commemorating horrific events from our past like the shooting of Edgar Rice and the lynching of Zachariah Walker 100 years later.

Parkesburg Yesterday

Parkesburg Today commemorates the 100th anniversary of the lynching of Zachariah Walker south of Coatesville on August 13th, 1911.

Zachariah Walker was a young African-American common laborer from Virginia who came to Coatesville to work in Worth Brother Steel, one of Coatesville's two steel mills.

Walker stood accused of shooting Edgar Rice, a white police officer, after a brief scuffle in downtown Coatesville.

After shooting the officer Walker immediately fled the scene but was arrested the next day and taken to the hospital to get treatment for a gun shot wound he received while being captured.

Pennsylvania historic marker commemorating officer Edgar Rice's death and Zachariah Walker's lynching placed by the side of Route 82 just south of Coatesville in 2006

The following day two dozen townsfolk, angry about the death of a respected police officer at the hands of a black man, descended on the hospital where Walker lay handcuffed to his hospital bed.  The mob pushed the lone guard protecting the prisoner aside, seized Walker and dragged him into the hills of East Fallowfield Township, south of Coatesville.

A bonfire was built and Walker tossed on the flames to die.  Over the next 30 minutes, as thousands of townsfolk looked on, Walker escaped the flames three times.   Finally, after his third escape attempt, the mob placed a rope around Walker's neck pinning him in the fire and ensuring his horrible death.

Walker's last words were, "Don't give me no crooked death because I'm not white."

Beginning with the Christiana Riots in 1851 where 43 people (5 whites and 38 blacks) were arrested for treason and a Maryland slave owner killed attempting to capture an escaped slave, Zachariah Walkers lynching 60 years later, continuing through a spate of barn burnings in the 1990's and the display of the Confederate flag on a few cars in Octorara's parking lot just a couple of years ago, race relations and the struggle for respect, equality and common decency have always been a simmering pot in the Octorara region.

In that long history the lynching of Zachariah Walker stands as a seminal moment, not just for our region but for the United States as well.  Walker's death was the last lynching of an African American in Pennsylvania and some say the entire northeast United States.  The incident brought national exposure to Coatesville, gave rise to the NAACP, then an organization just a year old, and led to anti-lynching laws throughout the country.

Today we pause to remember this tragic, but historically significant event.

We remember Edgar Rice, the Coatesville policeman killed in the line of duty, as well as Zachariah Walker, whose life was taken not by the American justice system, but by a vigilante mob intent of extracting the last gruesome ounce of revenge.

We remember this horrible chapter of our past to remind us of our obligation as both Americans and followers of Christ, to live, as Abraham Lincoln said in his first Inaugural address, up to the "better angels of our nature."

"We are not enemies, but friends.  We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory ... will yet swell ... when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

To read more about the tragic death of Edgar Rice and Zachariah Walker and the Remembrance and Reconciliation events planned in Coatesville today you can click here (the audio about the lynching starts at the 26:30 mark), here and here.

Rice's simple gravestone at the Hephzibah Baptist Church along Strasburg Road in East Fallowfield. (photo courtesy of Genealogical Gems blog)