By Liz Holland

In the evening of Dec. 4, 1931, 23-year-old Matthew Williams was pulled from a bed in the old Negro Ward at Peninsula General Hospital by a mob that was angered by the shooting death of Williams’ employer earlier that day.

Williams, who was being treated for gunshot wounds he received during the incident, was pulled from his bed, stabbed with an ice pick and then dragged behind a truck three blocks to the Wicomico County Courthouse Lawn where his body was strung up in a tree. 

Nearly 90 years later, Williams and two other men lynched in Wicomico County will be remembered when the city of Salisbury and the Salisbury Lynching Memorial Task Force host a Lynching Memorial Unveiling ‘Silent No More,’ an all-day event on Saturday, May 22.

The event will include a symbolic march following the route of the Williams lynch mob, starting at noon from the hospital – now called TidalHealth Peninsula Regional -- at the corner of Route 13 and Carroll Street and will proceed to the Wicomico County Courthouse where a memorial sign will be installed.

It will be the third such event in Maryland, including one last weekend in Baltimore County, and is an effort led by the Maryland Lynching Memorial Project. The group has documented racial terror lynchings in 18 of Maryland’s 24 counties, and it is working with affiliate groups in 13 of those counties.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan issued a full posthumous pardon for 34 victims of racial lynching in Maryland between 1854 and 1933, on the basis that these extrajudicial killings violated fundamental rights to due process and equal protection of law. It is the first time in history that a governor has issued a blanket pardon for the victims of racial lynchings.

The governor made his announcement at an event in Towson in honor of Howard Cooper, a 15-year-old boy who was dragged from the Baltimore County Jail and hanged from a sycamore tree in 1885. In addition, Hogan sent a letter to President Biden encouraging him to establish a U.S. Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Commission.

Matthew Williams was not included in the pardons because he was never arrested or charged with a crime. And there are differing accounts of what happened when his employer, Daniel J. Elliot, was shot and killed.

Williams worked as a laborer for Elliot, who owned a lumberyard and box factory in town, and also did odd jobs for the Elliot family. The official story is that Williams shot Elliot after confronting him about low wages.

When police arrived, they found Elliot dead, Williams incapacitated by several gunshot wounds and Elliot’s son James at the scene.

“James Elliot stated that he had heard the shots from the house and ran to investigate, finding his father dead and Williams lying on the ground in a pool of blood. As James ran for help, Williams recovered enough to flee towards the lumberyard, only to be stopped by James Elliot with gunshot wounds to the shoulder and leg,” according to the Salisbury Lynching Memorial Task Force website.

A different account of the incident is found in Shepard Krech III’s “Praise The Bridge That Carries You Over: The Life of Joseph L. Sutton.” Sutton recalls a conversation in Easton with a friend who said it was actually Elliot’s son, James, who did the shooting.

Williams was taken to the hospital where he was placed in a straightjacket, and his head and shoulder wounds bandaged. When word got out that Williams was still alive, a mob soon formed on the hospital lawn, shouting “Let’s lynch him.”

There were unsuccessful attempts to stop the mob made by Salisbury Police Chief N.H. Holland, Wicomico County Sheriff G. Murray Phillips and Deputy John Parks.

Salisbury’s memorial event also will recognize Garfield King an 18-year-old Black man who was lynched in 1898 in Wicomico County after he allegedly shot and killed Herman Kenney, a 22-year-old white man, following an argument. King told police he shot Kenney in self-defense. King was dragged from his cell, beaten, clubbed and hanged from a tree. King was included in Hogan’s recent pardons.

A third and unidentified man also was believed to have been lynched by the same mob that killed Williams. His body was found on the railroad tracks on the outskirts of Salisbury a few days later.

The May 22 march will be followed by a symbolic soil collection from the site where Williams was lynched. A jar will be filled for each of the three lynching victims in Salisbury’s history. The public is encouraged to participate in this soil collection and transfer from 1:15 to 3 p.m.

The official unveiling ceremony will commence at 3 p.m. with speeches from local leaders, descendants of the victims, representatives from the Equal Justice Initiative, and members of the city’s Lynching Memorial Task Force. All aspects of the event will be live-streamed via the city’s Facebook page and available to watch throughout the day.

Free parking will be available for this event in Downtown Salisbury at the Parking Garage located on Circle Avenue or in the parking lot across from the library, the entrance for which is located on Circle Ave. The event as well as all parking lots are wheelchair and handicap accessible.

In January 2020, Mayor Jake Day announced that he would be accepting the recommendation of the City’s Human Rights Advisory Committee to establish a Lynching Memorial Task Force to facilitate the creation of a permanent monument in honor and solemn remembrance of the three American citizens who lost their lives at the hands of lynch mobs in Wicomico County.

“The events which led to the deaths of these men represent the darkest, most despicable acts of which we are capable,” said the Mayor. “It’s not enough to tell the world that we’re better than these acts, and then just try to move past them. What we have to understand is that the scars left upon a community by coordinated acts of mob violence don’t heal overnight. They don’t heal over decades. They can only begin to heal when we acknowledge and address the reprehensible acts themselves. And, most importantly, the three men who died deserve basic human dignity. They were denied that. By erecting this monument, we are doing what we can to try to give it back.”

Funding for this memorial was made possible by the Equal Justice Initiative, which was established in 1989 by Bryan Stevenson, and operates based out of Montgomery, Ala., as a non-profit organization. They are committed to starting conversations, shining a light on injustice, and changing the overall narrative about race in our country. 

To learn more about the three lynching victims, Matthew Williams, Garfield King, and Unknown visit Salisbury’s Lynching Memorial Task Force at mdlynchingmemorial.wixsite.com/wicomico , an informational site put together by the Maryland Lynching Memorial Project. 

To learn more about the Equal Justice Initiative, their community projects, and their physical locations and memorial in Alabama, visit eji.org.