Early on the morning of March 16, 1922, George Tompkins left his aunt and uncle’s dwelling in Indianapolis for the final time.
Tompkins’ household mentioned the 19-year-old Black man, a latest migrant from Kentucky who labored at a glass manufacturing unit, had left in good spirits. After Tompkins was discovered useless close to the White River with a noose round his neck and his fingers tied behind his again, his physique slumped towards the sapling whose branches held the rope, the Marion County coroner advised reporters that “Tompkins couldn’t have hanged himself.” His household discovered no suicide notice.
However Indianapolis police detectives claimed Tompkins had killed himself, and the coroner reported Tompkins’ official method of demise as suicide.
It took a century and a citizen-led excavation of the details surrounding the younger man’s demise for the coroner’s workplace to overturn that call in 2022. On the 103rd anniversary of Tompkins’ demise Sunday, those self same residents unveiled a plaque telling the true story at Municipal Gardens park, close to the wooded space the place Tompkins was strangled to demise.
A plaque commemorating the lynching of George Tompkins, a 19-year-old Black man who moved to Indianapolis from the South, now stands in Municipal Gardens park, close to the wooded space the place he was killed, at 1831 Lafayette Street in Indianapolis on March 16, 2025.
“This justice isn’t just about correcting historical past,” mentioned Coroner Alfarena McGinty, who modified Tompkins’ authorized method of demise to murder in 2022 when she was the chief deputy coroner. “It’s about shaping our future, the place nobody’s life is disregarded, the place no fact is buried and the place everybody’s private humanity is honored in life and in demise.”
Tompkins was considered one of no less than 25 racial lynching victims in Indiana between 1866 and 1950, in accordance with the Equal Justice Initiative, a civil rights group in Montgomery, Alabama, that helped erect the nationwide historic marker. In that timeframe greater than 6,500 Black folks throughout the nation had been victims of lynching.
Tompkins’ demise was dropped at mild by the Indiana Remembrance Coalition, an Indianapolis group that tells tales of racial violence and racism. Indiana College anthropology professor Paul Mullins initially found the case, in accordance with IRC member Phil Bremen. In 2022 the group devoted a gravestone to Tompkins’ beforehand unmarked grave in Floral Park Cemetery.
Extra: Exhibit reckons with Indiana’s racial violence through anti-lynching art
Marion County Coroner Alfarena McGinty holds a placard exhibiting her determination in 2022 to vary George Tompkins’ method of demise from suicide to murder a century after his demise at a ceremony at Municipal Gardens metropolis park in Indianapolis on March 16, 2025.
The markers inform important tales that “bother the waters” of false histories, IU Indianapolis professor Joseph Tucker Edmonds mentioned Sunday, alluding to the phrases of Black journalist Ida B. Wells.
Lynching “was an illustration of … the cardinal precept that it doesn’t matter what the attainment or the character or the standing of the African American,” Edmonds mentioned, “the legal guidelines of everything of the USA is not going to defend her or him towards a white man.”
The plaque marking Tompkins’ demise will quickly develop into a part of a remembrance backyard with a strolling path, artwork installations and flower beds on the metropolis park at 1831 Lafayette Street.
Electronic mail IndyStar Reporter Jordan Smith at JTsmith@gannett.com. Comply with him on X: @jordantsmith09
This text initially appeared on Indianapolis Star: New plaque tells story of Indianapolis lynching victim
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