Small ceremony provides a marker, resting place for George Ward's memory

Mark Bennett, The Tribune-Star, Terre Haute, Ind.
·3 min read

Sep. 27—Terry Ward felt a measure of peace Monday afternoon. Long-awaited peace.

One-hundred and 21 years after his African American great-grandfather, George Ward, was lynched in Terre Haute by a vicious white mob that also burned his body. No one from the throng, which totaled more than 1,000 people, was ever held responsible for that atrocity in 1901. George Ward never received a proper burial.

A ceremony on Monday afternoon at Highland Lawn Cemetery gave George Ward's memory a resting place.

The event was the second remembrance of George Ward, and the injustice inflicted on him, in the Terre Haute community. On Sept. 26, 2021, a historical marker was placed on Fairbanks Park's north side. That's close to where Ward was lynched by the violent mob that stormed the Vigo County Jail and hanged him from the Wabash River bridge. The brutality denied Ward due process under the law, after Ward — a Terre Haute father, husband and worker — had been accused of murdering a young schoolteacher, Ida Finkelstein, and arrested that same day.

On Monday, a jar of soil gathered from the area near George Ward's 1901 lynching was buried at Highland Lawn, near the graves of his daughter-in-law, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A second historical marker also was placed in the cemetery.

"From that perspective, we were trying to get a place to rest for him," Terry Ward said of his great-grandfather, following Monday afternoon's small, private ceremony.

"It represents to us the proper burial that many African Americans desire to have," Ward added, "and to let the spirit be free."

The effort to remember George Ward and for the community to acknowledge the injustice got momentum from several sources, including the Terre Haute Facing Injustice project, the Greater Terre Haute NAACP branch, the national Community Remembrance Project of the Equal Justice Initiative based in Montgomery, Ala., Terre Haute historian Crystal Reynolds, and Terry Ward and his family, as well as others. The Equal Justice Initiative's "Lynching in America" report states that more than 4,400 racial terror lynchings occurred in America between the post-Civil War Reconstruction era and World War II.

The 2021 historical marker dedication near the riverfront included the reading of Indiana Senate Resolution 72 memorializing George Ward. Local public officials, including Mayor Duke Bennett and state Sen. Jon Ford participated in the dedication ceremony. The day showed a difference in Terre Haute from 1901 to 2021. "The difference is that the community rallied behind what we were doing," Terry Ward said Monday.

He called Monday's quiet ceremony "a joy for me, a painful joy, but a joy." The stigma that followed his family for generations after George Ward's lynching has been lifted.

Reynolds attended the interment of the soil and second marker dedication and afterward said, "It was about peace and joy."

Reynolds is originally from New Orleans, where African American funerals traditionally conclude with upbeat music. Monday's ceremony finished with the Andre Crouch song, "Soon and Very Soon," with the chorus line "Hallelujah, Hallelujah, we are goin' to see the King!"

"We believe that now the person is in a better place," Reynolds said, "and we believe George Ward is in a better place."

Mark Bennett can be reached at 812-231-4377 or mark.bennett@tribstar.com.