photo by: contributed

A historical marker provides information about the sexual assault of Margaret "Sis" Vinegar.

A dedication ceremony for the historical marker that tells the story of Margaret “Sis” Vinegar, a 14-year-old Black girl imprisoned after her 1882 rape, will take place on Saturday.

The ceremony will include multiple speakers, including local leaders and those involved in the project to create historical markers for Margaret as well as three Black men who were lynched by a white mob in the wake of Margaret’s rape.

Margaret was 14 in 1882 when David Bausman, a white farmer in his 40s, sexually assaulted her under the Kansas River bridge in downtown Lawrence. Two friends of Margaret’s who came to her aid, both of whom were Black, were lynched after Bausman’s body was found in the river. Margaret’s father was also lynched, though he was not in town the day the events took place.

Margaret, rather than being treated as a victim of rape, was accused without evidence of conspiring with the men and convicted of murder. She was sent to Lansing prison, where she contracted tuberculosis and died at the age of 20.

“Sis was twice convicted in 1883 by all-white juries of the murder of the white man who sexually assaulted her, after his body was found floating in the Kansas River,” a news release about the event states.

The Lawrence branch of the NAACP collaborated with the Equal Justice Initiative on the marker project, which seeks to recognize the racial and sexual violence Margaret faced, as the Journal-World recently reported. The collaboration, the Lawrence/Douglas County Remembrance Project Coalition, which also involves the city, placed a historical marker on the site of the lynching last year. The Lawrence City Commission voted in May to approve the historical marker for Margaret.

The Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama, provided the marker for Margaret, as well as the lynching marker, as part of the Lynching in America project. The project has identified more than 4,400 racial terror lynchings that occurred in the U.S. between the years 1877 and 1950, according to the news release.

The marker dedication ceremony will take place at 6:30 p.m. Saturday near the site of the marker. The marker is placed at the northwest corner of Eighth and Kentucky streets, which is near the former location of the courthouse where Margaret’s trial took place. The dedication ceremony will take place across the street from the marker location, in the north section of the parking lot of Central Bank, 300 W. Ninth St.

Planned speakers at the ceremony include the Rev. Rachel Williams-Glenn, pastor of St. Luke AME Church; Jennifer Ananda, executive director of the Sexual Trauma and Abuse Care Center; Michaela Clarke, project manager at Columbia University Justice Lab in New York; Sierra Two Bulls, leader, Indigenous Community Center; Ursula Minor, president, Lawrence Branch NAACP; and Lawrence Mayor Lisa Larsen, honorary co-chair of the Lawrence/Douglas County Remembrance Project Coalition.

For more information see the Community Remembrance Project Coalition website at ldccrp.org, or write ldccrpcoalition@gmail.com.