The Black Archives of Mid-America in Kansas City, the Missouri Conference of the NAACP, Missouri Faith Voices, Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty and the Equal Justice Initiative teamed up to make it happen.
Staci Pratt, who leads Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, was a driving force behind the marker. She sees a connection between lynching and the work she does advocating against capital punishment.
“There was a correlation that there was really a connection between the regions in Missouri, where we’re engaging in capital punishment, producing executions, have more pending capital cases and the historical practice of lynching,” Pratt said.
She said race is the biggest correlation, both in who was chosen for lynching then and who gets the death penalty now.
