On August 23rd, 2024, the West Virginia Council of Churches held its second Service of Remembrance and Lament for Those Lynched in West Virginia. During the interfaith service, nearly 50 names were read—all of them West Virginians who were killed by lynching. Attendees also listened to songs performed by Charleston’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Male Chorus, prayed, and heard remarks from Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Bailey.
This powerful event was only possible due to the efforts of the Council’s Dismantling Racism Task Force, which is co-chaired by Rev. Kay Albright and Rev. Roberta Smith. We sat down and interviewed Rev. Smith to learn a little more about the service, West Virginia’s history of lynching, and next steps the Council intends to take.
West Virginia Council of Churches (WVCC): How did the WVCC Dismantling Racism Task Force come up with the idea for this service?
Rev. Roberta Smith: One of our committee members, Rev. Kay Albright, went down south to Montgomery, Alabama to visit the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. They have the names of people who were lynched in each state on these hanging slabs, and Rev. Albright took pictures of the names from West Virginia. And we were astonished at the number of names. Maybe it was my ignorance, but I did not think—like the rest of the committee members—that there was that much lynching going on in West Virginia, since it was considered a Union State.
WVCC: Once the Council learned about this history, what were your next steps?
Rev. Smith: We began to look into it—to see how this could happen without us knowing about it or being taught about it. We began to research online and through newspapers, and we found out that our state was notorious for lynching folks back in the day. It was so bad, that West Virginia passed an anti-lynching law.
So I said, “We need to do something here. We need to repent for what we’ve done. We are the West Virginia Council of Churches. Now that we know this, we need to do something to acknowledge the wrong that has taken place. We are a religious organization. If anybody needs to stand up and bring it to the public’s knowledge, we should.”
We held our first remembrance service last year on Juneteenth, and we held our second this year on Aug. 23.
WVCC: Why are you personally passionate about honoring West Virginia’s lynching victims?
Rev. Smith: Right now, I’m the only woman of color that operates as a Council committee member. I was horrified to learn that, even though this was a part of West Virginia history, we were never taught about it in school. Even though West Virginia has come very far, and we are now considered very, very friendly, we can’t forget our troubling history. Especially in this day and time, in this political climate, I worry that we could have more modern-day lynchings or shootings, if people felt they could get away with it.
WVCC: What do you hope to achieve by doing this kind of work?
Rev. Smith: We don’t know why these people were lynched. When we bring up this history, and this information becomes publicized in the towns where these lynchings happened, the descendants of the people who did these horrible things may learn that grandma, grandpa, and great-granddad were party to lynchings.
But this also does something for the descendants of the people of color who were lynched. Even though it’s taking place many years later, things are being brought to light and being remembered. I hope that brings them a little bit of relief—acknowledging that the deaths of their ancestors weren’t totally in vain. It’s important to acknowledge when a wrong has been done. We do that in personal relationships all the time. We say, “Just admit you were wrong. Let’s clear the air.”
We don’t want to do this again. And we’re going to repeat this every year to remind West Virginians what happened and make sure we don’t do it again.
WVCC: Do you have any plans for future remembrance projects?
Rev. Smith: The names that we have now are only the tip of the iceberg. We haven’t really dug deep because we really haven’t had the time. Our eventual goal is to get a memorial constructed on the West Virginia State Capitol lawn. It may take us some time to do that, but right now, we’re just bringing this information to the public.
We’re also working on a website where we can list the names of people who’ve been lynched. Eventually, we’re hoping to do outreach around the state, asking folks, “Have you ever heard of somebody in your family or in your town being lynched?” to find out if there are names we don’t know about.