In 1920, a Black coal miner named Dave Hurst was lynched by a white mob in the Kent Junction area of Wise County.

A special highway marker was dedicated to Hurst Saturday. It was placed along Old Highway 23 by the Wise County and City of Norton Community Remembrance Coalition.

It's a record that a lot of people are scared of revealing, ashamed of, don't wanna talk about these kinds of things. We think it's very important that we bring this history as unpleasant as it is, we have to bring it to light," Tom Costa with the University of Virginia at Wise said.

As part of the Racial Justice Initiative, leaders say this monument will represent one of the most terrifying things African Americans had to go through.

Terran Outsey with the Community Remembrance Project says as a woman of color, it's important to recognize the right and wrongs of history.

A lot of people don't think these things happen around here, they don't think there were slaves around here. There were a lot of enslaved people here, there were a lot of slaveholders here, there were a lot of racial crimes that happened here," Outsey said.

Two of the three markers have been placed in memory of the lynchings dating back to the 1920s. One was placed last October in Pound Gap to recognize Leonard Woods.

A third will be dedicated next summer in Coeburn.