Maryland Governor Larry Hogan (R) on Saturday granted posthumous pardons to 34 Black lynching victims in the state between 1854 and 1933.
Hogan announced the pardon of Howard Cooper,15, who was dragged from a jail cell by 75 masked men and hanged from a nearby tree, and 33 others.
Historians say that Cooper had been accused of rape and was lynched by an angry mob unwilling to give him due process in court.
Hogan read each name on the list of 34, and said, “My hope is that this action will at least in some way help to right these horrific wrongs — and perhaps bring a measure of peace to the memories of these individuals and their descendants.”
Hogan is term limited from seeking another term as governor and is said to be weighing his political options.
The Maryland NAACP leader is calling Hogan’s pardons “political posturing.”
“This is just political posturing that nobody needs right now,” Flowers told CNN on Sunday. “If the governor’s going to do something, he should with his power as governor look at the many broken systems based on the same type of vitriol, contempt, hatred, that caused the murders of these gentlemen. Every system that has been broken, as the governor of Maryland, he alone can change all of it.”
He continued, “Celebrating himself by reminding people that lynchings happened is not the best thing you can do, it’s actually the least that he could do.”
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