Soil bears witness to New Jersey lynching of Mingo Jack

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The only documented lynching in New Jersey will be memorialized in a traveling exhibit called Bearing Witness.

An engraved jar containing soil that was collected from the Eatontown, N.J. site, where Samuel Mingo Jack Johnson was lynched in 1886, will travel to various locations in New Jersey.

Bearing witness to Mingo Jack

Created by The New Jersey Social Justice Remembrance Coalition (NJSJRC), “Bearing Witness” will be a table-top display accompanied with literature and handouts. The coalition is also in the process of creating interpretive panels and other complimentary materials.

Traveling sites

During the month of May, vessels of the collected soil will travel to various sites in including the Eatontown Library, Monmouth County Eastern Branch Library, in Shrewsbury, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Princeton, and the Red Bank Library. A vessel of soil will also be housed permanently at the T. Thomas Fortune Cultural Center, located in Red Bank, in time for Juneteenth.

In partnership with the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) in Montgomery, Alabama, the NJSJRC asks viewers to join in “bearing witness” to this personal and community tragedy, and to reflect on actions we can take today to end the ongoing legacy of racial violence and inequality.

The Community Remembrance Collection Project gathers soil at lynching sites to display in exhibits bearing the victims’ names. The NJSJRC held a soil collection ceremony last October that attracted a large outpouring of community members from all sectors.

The NJSJRC is linked with partnering communities nationwide to document and memorialize sites of enslavement, racial terror lynching, and segregation, for the purpose of fostering meaningful dialogue about race and justice today.

Samuel “Mingo Jack” Johnson was an African American resident of Eatontown, who was murdered on March 5, 1886, after being arrested on unsubstantiated charges of raping a white woman. He was dragged by a local white mob from his cell and brutally beaten and hanged to death. This was the only documented lynching in New Jersey.

The exhibit is at no cost to the host organization. To become a site location for “Bearing Witness” you can inquire at [email protected]