East Point to dedicate memorial for lynching of 14-year-old boy

Officials this weekend are holding a ceremony to honor the life of a Black teenager who was lynched in 1889.

The event commemorating Warren Powell is being hosted by the city of East Point and the Fulton County Remembrance Coalition. The coalition partners with the Montgomery-based Equal Justice Initiative to help healing and raise awareness of lynchings.

Warren was accused of attacking a white girl named Ada Brooks while she was walking back from school. A mob of men broke into the jail the day of his arrest and lynched Warren. He was one of the at least 35 Black victims of racial terror lynching between 1889 and 1936, according to a news release from the city.

A Sept. 5, 1889 article in The Atlanta Constitution described Ada as “the daughter of a well-to-do and respectable farmer” and Warren as “a worthless fellow, who has spent most of his time in loafing about in town.” He was 14 years old.

The bailiff immediately telegraphed Atlanta to ask for help ensuring the safety of Powell, according to the newspaper story. The jail was two rooms in the back of the post office secured by a padlock. A mob of several hundred people had formed outside the jail two hours after the arrest.

Tension built for two and a half hours before a group of 15 to 20 masked men scared the bailiff into apparently fumbling the key out of his pocket. But one of the masked men just took a hatchet to the lock anyway and the crew dragged Warren outside.

The article reports that Powell’s father and mother, the only Black people in the crowd, pleaded with the men who held their crying son. Their plea? “For God’s sake,” let our son “not be hung all the way until he was lost in the distance.”