FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The documentary “The Three (Known) Lynchings of Montgomery County, Maryland” will have its premiere on November 15, 2020, at a virtual event sponsored by the Montgomery County Lynching Memorial Project.
The film uses news clippings, maps, other documents, and interviews to detail the three lynchings that are known to have occurred in Montgomery County between 1880 and 1896. Although the three incidents were widely publicized at the time, until recently these acts of racial terrorism had been almost completely forgotten, or erased, from county memory and historical accounts.
“I’m really excited that MoCo LMP [the Montgomery County Lynching Memorial Project] has decided to host this premiere,” said director Jay Mallin, a Silver Spring filmmaker. “The group’s goals and my goal in making this film completely dovetail — to provide people the opportunity to be aware of what happened in our county, to see exactly where the events occurred, and to spark discussion of how their impact carries into today.”
“We are proud to work with Jay on the release of this important film,” said Beth Baker, a spokesperson for MoCo LMP. “We believe that facing our painful history is the first step toward racial healing and reconciliation.”
Three African American men were lynched by Montgomery County mobs in the late 1800s: Mr. George Peck and Mr. John Diggs or Dorsey in 1880, and Mr. Sidney Randolph 16 years later. The incidents were reported in news accounts that conflict in many details, but which nevertheless were published nationwide. Although many of the accounts depicted these incidents as the work of relatively small groups of local citizens, the aftermaths made plain that almost no white person of authority in the county — not its prosecutors, jurors, elected officials, journalists or preachers — seriously objected to the public murder of the three African American men.
The documentary, funded in part by a 2019 grant from the Arts & Humanities Council of Montgomery County, will be shown by MoCo LMP in a virtual event by Zoom, followed by a panel discussion with questions featuring Mallin and the three people who appear in the film – Anthony Cohen, a historian and founder of the Menare Foundation, Sarah Hedlund, archivist and librarian for Montgomery History, and Michael V. Williams of Montgomery County Public Schools. Williams, chosen MCPS Teacher of the Year in 2016, narrates the film. He also appears in it, speaking from personal experience on the impact of the county’s legacy of racial terrorism on Montgomery County today.
The premiere will be free, but requires pre-registration at https://tinyurl.com/mocolmpnov15. The link to register is also available online at the websites of MoCoLMP, https://mdlynchingmemorial.wixsite.com/montco, and on the film’s website, https://thethreelynchings.film.
Media inquiries:
Contact us: info@thethreelynchings.film
Contact the Montgomery County Lynching Memorial Project: mocolynchingmemorial@gmail.com
