Historian Nicholas Creary began researching lynchings in Maryland about five years ago with his undergraduate students at Bowie State University. They ultimately found at least 40 cases in which Black people had been lynched in the state between 1854 and 1933. Creary, who has since moved on to the University of Iowa, took the findings to Joseline Peña-Melnyk, his local representative in the Maryland House of Delegates, and asked her whether they could do something to hold the state accountable. Peña-Melnyk, whom Creary described to me as a “force of nature,” readily agreed.

Originally from the Dominican Republic, Peña-Melnyk has been a state delegate since 2007. She represents two counties, Anne Arundel and Prince George’s, in which a total of at least 10 Black people were lynched. “It’s the right time to have a discussion on race,” she told me via phone, citing recent incidents in Maryland in which swastikas were found on college campuses, KKK literature was distributed in neighborhoods, and a noose was hung at a middle school. “You need to know your past,” Peña-Melnyk is fond of saying, “in order to understand your future.” She and Creary got to work.

The resulting bill, known as HB 307, was a remarkable piece of legislation. After citing the deaths of at least 40 African Americans by lynching, it notes that “no person was ever tried, convicted, or otherwise brought to justice for participating” in the lynchings; that “State, county, and local government entities colluded in the commission of these crimes and conspired to conceal the identities of the parties involved;” that the crimes were unjust and “intended to terrorize African American communities and force them into silence and subservience to the ideology of white supremacy;” and that “no victim’s family or community ever received a formal apology or compensation from State, county, or local government entities for the violent loss of their men.”

Peña-Melnyk expertly navigated HB 307 through Maryland’s General Assembly. The bill passed both Democratic-led chambers of the Assembly with overwhelming bipartisan support. It was signed into law by Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, in April 2019.

Over the next two years, the commission is charged with discovering and documenting racial terror lynchings, holding regional hearings in those areas where lynchings took place, investigating the complicity of both government agencies and the media in the lynchings that occurred, soliciting input from the community about how to address and reconcile these crimes, and submitting to the governor and General Assembly “recommendations for addressing the legacy of lynching that are rooted in the spirit of restorative justice.”

Read the full article about restorative justice for lynching victims and their families by DJ Cashmere at YES! Magazine.