MS Freedom Trail Marker unveiled honoring Howze Sisters of Shubuta
JANS – Visit Mississippi and the Mississippi Humanities Council unveiled a new Mississippi Freedom Trail marker in Shubuta honoring Alma and Maggie Howze. The Howze Sisters were among six Black citizens slain at the infamous “Hanging Bridge” near Shubuta during the early 20th century.
The unveiling ceremony featured remarks from Shubuta Mayor Cedric Chapman; John Spann, program and outreach officer for the Mississippi Humanities Council; Dr. Jason Morgan Ward, history professor at Emory University and author of Hanging Bridge: Racial Violence and America’s Civil Rights Century; and sisters Sasha Taylor-Barnes and Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, acclaimed American actress and civil rights advocate.
On Dec. 20, 1918, a mob seized sisters Maggie and Alma Howze, along with brothers Major and Andrew Clark, from the Shubuta jail and hanged them from a river bridge one mile north of town. Twenty-four years later, two teenage boys – Ernest Green and Charlie Lang – were lynched at the same site. These tragic events galvanized the NAACP’s anti-lynching campaign and underscored the threats of racial violence faced by Black women and children during the Jim Crow era.
The lynchings in Shubuta occurred during an early, yet pivotal, moment in the Black struggle for freedom and equality in Mississippi. The victims and the site of their killings became powerful symbols in the national campaign against racial violence and hatred, linking this rural community to the broader Civil Rights Movement.
