Shelbyville, Kentucky unveiled three historical markers last week memorializing lynchings in the community. The markers were erected by local community groups and the equal justice initiative. On covered the Reconstruction Era lynching of a Black man. Here is what the plaque says:
In the early hours of February 15, 1878, at least three white men shot and killed a Black man named Reuben Dennis. The men abducted Mr. Dennis from the Shelbyville home of a Black man named Alfred Rucker, forced him at gunpoint to a nearby field, and fatally shot him.
Mr. Dennis was lynched three months after being fined and released on charges of striking a white man. Though the reported facts suggested that Mr. Dennis had acted in self defense, he was quickly arrested and arraigned on assault charges.
In the racial caste system of this era, white lives and white property had heightened value compared to the lives of Black people. In an unusual development for the era, Mr. Dennis was convicted, but received a $25 fine rather than prison time. The mob raided Mr. Rucker’s home and terrorized his family. Racial terrorism sought to maintain white supremacy by instilling fear in the entire Black community through brutal violence that was often unpredictable and life-threatening to any Black person in a mob’s path.
Beyond questioning the terrified Rucker family and asking the governor to offer a reward for information, records indicate that officials made very little effort to conduct their own investigation into who killed Mr. Dennis. Like most documented lynching victims, Mr. Dennis was killed by a white mob who never faced prosecution.
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