Historical marker dedicated to Indiana lynching victim

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Terry Ward, far right, the great grandson of George Ward, applauds with others as a historical marker honoring George Ward is unveiled during a ceremony on Sunday, Sept. 26, 2021. Next to Ward are Jeanne Rewa and Sylvester Edwards. George Ward was lynched by a mob in 1901 in Terre Haute. (Joseph C. Garza/The Tribune-Star via AP)

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Jacqueline Stewart leads a group of attendees across the Wabash River bridge after a historical marker was dedicated for Stewart’s great grandfather, George Ward, on Sunday, Sept. 26, 2021, in Terre Haute, Ind. Stewart stopped at a point on the bridge that she believed was close to the area where Ward was lynched by a mob in 1901. (Joseph C. Garza/The Tribune-Star via AP)

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Sylvester Edwards, president of the Greater Terre Haute NAACP branch, reads one side of the historical marker dedicated to George Ward during the dedication ceremony for it on Sunday, Sept. 26, 2021 in Terre Haute, Ind. Ward was lynched by a mob in Terre Haute in 1901. (Joseph C. Garza/The Tribune-Star via AP)

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Terry Ward, the great grandson of George Ward, describes the horrific events that led to his great grandfather’s lynching in 1901 during a dedication ceremony for a marker honoring George Ward on Sunday, Sept. 26, 2021 in Terre Haute, Ind. (Joseph C. Garza/The Tribune-Star via AP)

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Jacqueline Stewart and Ronald Cooper unveil the historical marker dedicated to the memory of George Ward during a ceremony on Sunday, Sept. 26, 2021, in Terre Haute, Ind. Stewart and Cooper are great grandchildren of Ward, who was lynched by an angry mob in Terre Haute near the Wabash River in 1901. (Joseph C. Garza/The Tribune-Star via AP)

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. (AP) — A historical marker has been dedicated in western Indiana in remembrance of a Black man lynched about 120 years ago by a white mob.

George Ward’s descendants, Terre Haute residents and the mayor were among those at Sunday’s ceremony in Fairbanks Park, the (Terre Haute) Tribune-Star reported.

George Ward was arrested in 1901 in the slaying of a white teacher, Ida Finkelstein. The mob took him from the Vigo County Jail and struck him in the head with a sledgehammer, said Terry Ward, adding that the attackers grabbed his great-grandfather along a bridge and bystanders pelted him with sticks.

“Imagine the pain and the fear and no one comes to your aid,” Terry Ward told those at the dedication.

George Ward then was hanged from a former wagon bridge. His body later was cut down and burned.

“George Ward was denied due process for a crime for which he was accused,” Terry Ward said. “He was killed by a mob that acted as judge, jury and executioner.”

The dedication was part of the national Community Remembrance Project, which recognizes lynching victims.

“If we don’t come together and memorialize victims of this kind of unjust terrorism, it says something about us,” said Bre Lamkin, part of the Equal Justice Initiative based in Alabama.

The marker dedication and other observances come amid a national reckoning on racial justice, including the practice of lynching, which was meant to instill terror in Black people.

“Our desire is to open the eyes of people today to the injustices of the past so in the future, we’ll never have to experience these atrocities again,” Terry Ward said.