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Seeking Redemption: Robert Johnson Soil Ceremony
November 16, 2021 @ 6:30 pm - 7:30 pm
Join the Hillsborough Equal Justice Initiative Project and The Portico for this remembrance ceremony.
Gather will Tampa Councilman Luis Viera, State Representative Fentrice Driskell, The Portico and the Tampa/Hillsborough EJI Coalition for a soil ceremony remembrance of Jim Crow era victim Robert Johnson.
From Equal Justice Initiative:
On January 28, 1934, a 40-year-old Black man named Robert Johnson was wrongly arrested in Tampa, Florida. White authorities within the Tampa police investigated Mr. Johnson’s alleged involvement in an attack on a white woman, and though he was quickly cleared of those charges, police did not release him.
A mob carried Robert Johnson to a wooded part of town along the Hillsborough River near Sligh Avenue, where about thirty people had gathered to watch the lynching. Though he had been cleared of the assault allegations and not even tried for the minor charge of theft, the mob had determined he should face death. The mob killed Mr. Johnson with four shots to the head and one to the body, all fired from Deputy Constable Graves’s pistol.
Help us commemorate Mr. Johnson and other lynching victims during this special memorial service.
Join event via Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/…/reg…/WN_ETdubuArTsKnH_8E-iYnSA
Learn more about the wrongful death of Mr. Johnson: https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/jan/28