Exactly 123 years to the day after a Black man was dragged from his cell in Franklin and hung from a bridge at the edge of town, a group of activists took the first step in attempting to reckon with Macon County’s most infamous lynching. 

Plans are underway for a Nov. 6 event in Franklin to commemorate the lynching of a Black man more than 120 years ago, but if organizers are successful, the Mozeley Memorial Walk will also initiate debate over how, if at all, Mitch Mozeley should be publicly acknowledged. 

Last month, members of the Haywood Branch of the NAACP took a trip to Montgomery, Alabama to visit a museum honoring more than 800 Americans who were lynched between 1877 and 1950.

There’s a monument there for each one of them — a long, steel box resembling a coffin, engraved with their names and places of death. One bears the inscription, “George Ratcliff, Haywood County.”