VALDOSTA — Christ the King and St. Barnabas Episcopal Churches invite the public to ”Lest We Forget – A Remembrance of Mary Turner” at Valdosta’s Civil Rights mural at 9 a.m. Saturday, May 18. With this event, both churches want to remember and honor Mary Turner, a black woman, who, on May 18, 1918, had the courage to speak truth to power despite the risks that existed at the time.

Turner was one of four children of sharecroppers in Colquitt County, the churches said in a press release about the event. She married Hazel “Hayes” Turner in 1917, and shortly after their wedding the couple moved south to take jobs on a plantation in Brooks County.

The plantation owner, Hampton Smith, was known for abusing his workers, but the newlyweds were determined to raise their children in southern Georgia.

On May 16, 1918, the plantation owner was killed by one of his workers. In the days that followed, a mob-driven manhunt known as the “Georgia Lynching Rampage” resulted in the killing of at least a dozen people, one of whom was Mary’s husband. Eight months pregnant, Mary Turner decried the lynching of her husband and denied that he had anything to do with the murder. To “teach her a lesson” the mob then focused on her, eventually found her as she entered Lowndes County, and brutally lynched her and her unborn baby near the Little River. No one was ever held accountable for this heinous crime.

“As practicing Christians, we firmly believe that we must do all we can to form a society that is based on justice, equality, and compassion for all members of the human race,” said Dr. Michael G. Noll, co-organizer of the event. “Only with truth telling can there be reconciliation and healing, so that we, as a society, can eventually become what Martin Luther King called the Beloved Community.”

The public is invited to this event at Valdosta’s Civil Rights mural which is located adjacent to Mack’s Park on McKey Street in downtown Valdosta.