Wednesday’s state highway sign dedication ceremony was a long time coming for the NAACP Loudoun Branch in Virginia. A lynching site in Leesburg now has a marker memorializing a local victim.
“It is the culmination of so many years, almost nine years of research, of humanizing victims of lynching and racial terror,” said Pastor Michelle C. Thomas, president of the NAACP of Loudoun County and the CEO and founder of the Loudoun Freedom Center.
It’s the first state historical marker in the county memorializing a lynching victim.
The sign at the northeast corner of the intersection of East Market Street and Catoctin Circle marks the site where 25-year-old Charles Craven was lynched in 1902. While being held at the county jail on charges of murdering a Confederate veteran and an unrelated robbery, a mob of hundreds of men broke in and took him to Potter’s Field half a mile away.
They hung Craven from a tree and shot him several times, despite the young man declaring his innocence.
No one was convicted for their role in the lynching.
“We’re believing that memorial will infuse the county with hope where no one feels as if they are overlooked and their story is forgotten,” Thomas said.
The Town of Leesburg was approached by the NAACP Loudoun Branch and the Loudoun Freedom Center about putting together a memorial to Craven.
The research for the sign was completed with help from Freedom High School teacher Joan Lewis-Osborne and students in her Advanced Placement African American Studies class.
The property owner, Catoctin Corner, LLC, gave support to put the sign at the intersection.
Final approval from the Virginia Department of Historic Resources for the memorial was given in September and the sign was officially dedicated Wednesday.
She said they are working on getting a second highway marker honoring 14-year-old Orion Anderson, who was lynched in 1889.
“Doesn’t matter if it happened in 1902, in 2025, we see you in 2025, we honor you in 2025, we memorialize your life together as a unified county,” she said. “Our struggle was real, and our struggle is real, and so we can’t afford to forget it.”
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