Wofford College will host a conference on South Carolina’s last lynching, the subsequent trial, a courageous sermon and the continuing challenge of preaching to confront racism.
The conference will be from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Feb. 17 in Wofford’s Leonard Auditorium in Spartanburg.
The event features the launch of Will Willimon’s latest book, “Who Lynched Willie Earle: Preaching to Confront Racism.”
The lynching of Willie Earle took place in Greenville on Feb. 16, 1947, when Earle, a 24-year-old black man, was arrested in connection with the robbery and killing of a Greenville cab driver named Thomas Watson Brown. Based on circumstantial evidence, Earle was charged with murder and arrested. A convoy of taxi drivers drove to the jail, forcibly procured Earle’s release and beat, stabbed and shot him to death in what is considered the last racially motivated lynching to occur in South Carolina.
The trial, which gained national media attention, resulted in the acquittal of 31 white men who had been charged with Earle’s murder.
The conference includes:
- Lectures from Willimon, a retired Methodist bishop and former dean of the chapel at Duke University; and Will Gravely, professor emeritus at the University of Denver and longtime scholar on the Willie Earle lynching and trial.
- Panel discussions on preaching to confront racism with Bishop L. Jonathan Holston and other clergy from South Carolina.
- Actors’ reading an excerpt from “The Lynching,” a two-act play by John Jeter and Lucy Beam Hoffman.
To register, contact Elizabeth Fields in Wofford’s Halligan Center for Religious & Spiritual Life at fieldsem@wofford.edu or 864-597-4050.
There is no cost for the event. A box lunch may be reserved for $10 in advance and paid for at the door. CEUs are available.
