A century after his death, Black man lynched in Indianapolis gets historical marker

Early connected the greeting of March 16, 1922, George Tompkins near his aunt and uncle's location successful Indianapolis for the past time.

Tompkins' household said the 19-year-old Black man, a caller migrant from Kentucky who worked astatine a solid factory, had near successful bully spirits. After Tompkins was recovered dormant adjacent the White River with a noose astir his cervix and his hands tied down his back, his assemblage slumped against the sapling whose branches held the rope, the Marion County coroner told reporters that "Tompkins could not person hanged himself." His household recovered nary termination note.

But Indianapolis constabulary detectives claimed Tompkins had killed himself, and the coroner reported Tompkins' authoritative mode of decease arsenic suicide.

It took a period and a citizen-led excavation of the facts surrounding the young man's decease for the coroner's bureau to overturn that determination successful 2022. On the 103rd day of Tompkins' decease Sunday, those aforesaid citizens unveiled a plaque telling the existent communicative astatine Municipal Gardens park, adjacent the wooded country wherever Tompkins was strangled to death.

"This justness is not conscionable astir correcting history," said Coroner Alfarena McGinty, who changed Tompkins' ineligible mode of decease to homicide successful 2022 erstwhile she was the main lawman coroner. "It is astir shaping our future, wherever nary one's beingness is disregarded, wherever nary information is buried and wherever everyone's idiosyncratic humanity is honored successful beingness and successful death."

Tompkins was 1 of astatine slightest 25 radical lynching victims successful Indiana betwixt 1866 and 1950, according to the Equal Justice Initiative, a civilian rights enactment successful Montgomery, Alabama, that helped erect the nationalist humanities marker. In that timeframe much than 6,500 Black radical crossed the federation were victims of lynching.

Tompkins' decease was brought to airy by the Indiana Remembrance Coalition, an Indianapolis enactment that tells stories of radical unit and racism. Indiana University anthropology prof Paul Mullins initially discovered the case, according to IRC subordinate Phil Bremen. In 2022 the radical dedicated a headstone to Tompkins' antecedently unmarked sedate successful Floral Park Cemetery.

More: Exhibit reckons with Indiana's radical unit done anti-lynching art

The markers archer indispensable stories that "trouble the waters" of mendacious histories, IU Indianapolis prof Joseph Tucker Edmonds said Sunday, alluding to the words of Black writer Ida B. Wells.

Lynching "was an illustration of ... the cardinal rule that nary substance what the attainment oregon the quality oregon the lasting of the African American," Edmonds said, "the laws of the entirety of the United States volition not support him oregon her against a achromatic man."

The plaque marking Tompkins' decease volition soon go portion of a remembrance plot with a walking path, creation installations and angiosperm beds astatine the metropolis parkland astatine 1831 Lafayette Road.

Email IndyStar Reporter Jordan Smith at JTsmith@gannett.com. Follow him connected X: @jordantsmith09

This nonfiction primitively appeared connected Indianapolis Star: New plaque tells communicative of Indianapolis lynching victim