Mississippi residents, Equal Justice Initiative officials turn out for Hibernia Lipsey Memorial

On Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026, several hundred individuals made their way to Goodman-Pickens Elementary School. They remained for three hours to honor the memory of Ms. Hibernia Lipsey. She had been murdered by a lynch mob nearly 103 years earlier. 

In the crowd were city officials from Pickens, Goodman, and Canton; staffers from the Mississippi Humanities Council and the Equal Justice Initiative; students and educators from across Holmes County; and residents from Jackson and the rest of Central Mississippi.

This assemblage was largely due to the hard work and organizing of Caroline and William Primer Jr. and the Holmes County Power of Place Committee. It was blessed with musical performances by Tamara Parker and the Howard Singers, the Goodman- Pickens Elementary School Choir, the Holmes County Mad House Marching Band, Rev. Annie Washington, the Holmes County Central Singers, and Mr. James Anderson, a 102-year-old WWII veteran. It had the flavor of a Southern Black church service.

The essence of the program centered on two axes – the story and significance of the mob murder of Hibernia Lipsey and the collection for preservation of soil from her grave. The rest of the program consisted of praise, entertainment, and plaque presentations.

Four speakers – Canton Mayor Tim Taylor in his response to the welcome addresses, Ms. Tammie Scott in giving the occasion, Dr. Byron D’Andra Orey in his reflections, and Dr. Ivory Phillips as guest speaker – gave an accounting of the sequence of events leading up to and including the shot that killed Lipsey. They were as follows.

On September 29, 1923, Lipsey’s brother, Willie Lipsey Jr., got into an altercation with a white man in Pickens, over either 10 cent interest on a loan or for accidentally bumping into a white woman. He was able to get the best of the man and ran home. He and his father, assuming that perhaps a mob would come looking for the son, hid in a local cotton field. The mob did arrive, surrounded the house, fired into it dozens of times, and killed Hibernia as she either attempted to reason with the mob or to flee. Although she was not the person being sought, she was shot dead; although she was clearly murdered, no one was ever arrested or charged; and although she was identified from the beginning, the state’s museum lists her as an “unknown girl.” 

The two versions of the story and the lack of an arrest or any compensation leave blanks in the historical record. That, to a large extent, prompted the organization of the memorial service. 

The speakers also talked about the murder in terms of its brutality and the tenor of the times. Three speakers pointed to the need to guard against the return of such a terroristic Jim Crow era.

The Equal Justice Initiative Soil Ceremony consisted of the Equal Justice Initiative representative explaining the process and the importance of the soil ceremony. This was followed by descendants of Hibernia Lipsey placing scoops of her soil into the container which will be placed in the Montgomery, Alabama, museum. This was done by Roosevelt Ambrose, Lipsey’s oldest living descendant, along with Jackie Primer, Fannie Jefferson, and Shaun Jefferson.

The program closed with Mary Day explaining the work of the Power of Place Project, “Lest Forget.” Then, in her acknowledgements, Mistress of Ceremonies Caroline Gray-Primer thanked everybody and invited them to the reception at Cowboy Corner immediately following the adjournment.  

(Photos: Dr. Kenneth Simon, M.D.)