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A flyer provides information about upcoming events to commemorate the 140th anniversary of the lynching of three Black men in Lawrence on June 10, 1882.

Three community events will soon be held to commemorate the 140th anniversary of the lynching of three Black men by a mob near downtown Lawrence.

Pete Vinegar, Isaac King and George Robertson were lynched by a mob of white Lawrence residents at the Kansas River bridge near downtown Lawrence in the early hours of June 10, 1882. The Lawrence/Douglas County Community Remembrance Project Coalition, in partnership with the Equal Justice Initiative of Montgomery, Alabama, is sponsoring three days of free public events to mark the 140th anniversary of the lynching.

The mob consisted of more than 100 white men who broke into the Douglas County Jail, then located downtown, and pulled the three men from their cells, according to a news release from Freedom’s Frontier National Heritage Area. King and Robertson were charged with murder in the death of a white man, but there were no charges against Vinegar. Although the lynch mob was composed of Lawrence residents, some of whom were named in newspaper accounts, no one was ever charged or faced any legal action for the murders of the three men.

Kerry Altenbernd, coordinator and liaison for the coalition, said the community needs to acknowledge what occurred.

“Facing the shameful parts of our past is the only way that communities can heal the generational trauma that will be inherited by future generations if these things are allowed to go unacknowledged and unreconciled,” Altenbernd said in the release.

Ursula Minor, president of the Lawrence Branch of the NAACP, also spoke to the need for reconciliation.

“Reconciliation is not forgetting the past, it is us moving forward together as a community towards the truth,” Minor said in the release.

The events include an author talk regarding racist violence, dedication of a marker at the site of the lynching and a film screening, according to the news release. More details about the events are as follows:

June 9: Brent Campney, professor of history at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, will speak on “Anti-Black Violence in Kansas and Lawrence During the Long Reconstruction” at 6:30 p.m. Campney is author of “This is Not Dixie: Racist Violence in Kansas, 1861-1927.” Campney was initially going to give his presentation in person, but due to a family issue will give his presentation virtually. The Lawrence Public Library will host the Zoom webinar, and participants may register to join at lplks.zoom.us/j/97632719977.

June 10: A marker that memorializes Vinegar, King and Robertson, which was recently installed on City Hall grounds near the lynching site, will be dedicated. The ceremony will begin at 7 p.m. outside City Hall, 6 E. Sixth St. Following the ceremony, there will be an informal gathering at the general area of the grave sites of the three men in the Potter’s Field section of Oak Hill Cemetery, 1605 Oak Hill Ave.

June 11: There will be two screenings of “Then Three Were Taken,” a new documentary on the lynching by Barbara Higgins-Dover. The screenings will take place at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. in the community room of the Watkins Museum of History, 1047 Massachusetts St. Though entry is free, space is limited and tickets are required. Tickets can be reserved at tinyurl.com/threeweretaken. The film can also be viewed on the museum’s YouTube channel beginning in the afternoon.

The Lawrence branch of the NAACP has been working since 2019 with the Equal Justice Initiative, which created a national lynching memorial in Montgomery, to erect a historical marker at the site of the lynching and take other steps to commemorate the victims, as the Journal-World has reported. The Community Remembrance Project coalition, which includes the Watkins Museum and other partners, was formed as part of the project. Steps to commemorate the victims have included a community memorial at the general area of grave sites of the three men, collecting soil from the site of the lynching to include at the national memorial, and an exhibit at Watkins, among other community events.

The Equal Justice Initiative provides historical markers free of charge to communities to commemorate lynchings. There are more than 4,400 documented racial terror lynchings that occurred in the U.S. between 1877 and 1950, according to the release.