By Rev. Dr. Heber Brown III
Dear David and Louisa Davis, Henrietta Cooper, Celeste Cooper, Henry Cooper and all the descendants and family of Howard Cooper:
Earlier this year, I was on my morning walk when I came across a historical marker on my route. It read, “On July 13, 1885, a white mob lynched Howard Cooper, a 15-year-old Black child, here at the former Baltimore County Jail.” It shared the story of the final months of Howard’s short life, concluding “Howard’s body was displayed so angry white residents and local train passengers could see his corpse. Later, pieces of the rope were given away as souvenirs. Howard’s mother, Henrietta, collected her child’s remains and buried him in an unmarked grave in Ruxton. No one was ever held accountable for her son’s lynching.”
Shortly after that, I traveled to Montgomery, Ala., for an event supported by the Equal Justice Initiative at The Legacy Sites. While there, I saw the memorial for Howard. It was a painful emblem bearing your personal tragedy and the terrible history of lynching in Baltimore County and Maryland as a whole. Unforgettably, I also saw the mason jar labeled with his name, filled with the very soil upon which he was killed.
I write not as someone who can erase the horror that happened to Howard, but as someone who refuses to let his story, nor those of the other 37 victims of lynching in Maryland, be forgotten.
At only 15 years old, he was stolen from you, from future generations and from all that could have been. The weight of this racial violence has not ended in the 140 years since that day.
I cannot imagine what it felt like for your family to know that Howard was dragged from the jailhouse in Towson, Md., under the cover of night. I can’t imagine what it was like to hear the news that Howard had been murdered, despite your family’s struggle for justice and appeals in the courts. I can’t imagine knowing that no one has ever been held accountable for lynching this child.
Dear Howard Cooper, your memory will never die. You were taken away, but your story will not be taken from us now. Many are trying to make us forget, but we declare that we will remember. Each time we read your name we are embedding your story and your life into our memories.
Too often, we forget the people behind our history. We have separated our policy from our people. The topic of reparations is often discussed and debated from a purely theoretical or even legal standpoint. However, your legacy shows us for whom reparations are necessary. You are real. Your family today is real. You deserve whatever justice and repair is available, no matter how late it may come.
Dear Henrietta, dear mother forced to bury her own son, you never should have had to bury your own child. You deserved to see Howard grow up alongside his twin, Henry, rather than have to take his remains away from hateful people—those who participated in his lynching and those who viewed the scene like entertainment, alike.
I can’t imagine how it would have felt to see Black people in your community, led by Rev. Dr. Harvey Johnson of the Union Baptist Church, raise enough money to file an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court only to have a vicious mob lash out in fear of this community’s love and strength. I can’t imagine seeing 75 grown men swarming your 15-year-old son, who sat defenseless inside a jail. To have struggled for months on end, through a jury stacked against your child and through multiple appeals, only to see White supremacists celebrating their murder of your child, is unfathomable.
Like Rizpah in the Bible, you protected your son’s body as best you could and buried him away from the beasts and birds of prey who hovered. Like Mary, you witnessed your son’s murder and were there to tend to his grave. You have been through too much, and you deserve whatever justice and healing is possible.
Dear Cooper family, I know that you carry these scars with you. There are too many families who bear the same scars. I am determined to shout Howard’s name, to tell these stories and all those like yours until you have received all possible justice and healing. I want to hear from you and from families like yours so that we may amplify the lives of those we have lost and call for repair.
Your family was not only denied justice in the 19th century—it has been denied recompense ever since. The curse of White supremacy has rippled through your family’s lineage. We’ll never be able to measure the ways in which your family’s loss has compounded over time. The men who took Howard’s life are long gone, but their descendants and the violent racial hierarchy they adhered to remain intact. Your story is part of this nation’s unfinished business. I yearn for a country where such terror is not just remembered, but repaid.
As a fellow sojourner in the struggle for recompense and repair, I am picking up where your community left off. I am shining a light on Howard’s story because he is more than a number in a collection of data or a footnote in a history book. He, you, and all those impacted by the legacy of lynchings are real people. Real families live today with the consequences of state-sanctioned mob action from 140 years ago. America knows how to pay what it owes. It’s done it before. The refusal to do so for descendants of enslaved and lynched Black Americans is not about practicality—it’s about will.
Reparations as a concept is not abstract, or existing far from our communities today. It is not all policy, legislation and elected officials. It is the Coopers. When we think about reparations, we must think about your family. We must think about Howard.
In remembrance and in pursuit of justice,
Rev. Dr. Heber Brown III
The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the writer and not necessarily those of the AFRO.
