Image 1: Coaling, Ala., where on July 12, 1898, over 100 white farmers hung and fatally shot Sidney Johnson after he was accused of assaulting two white women.  When a Black man named John Durrett denounced the mob killing, a white mob surrounded Durrett's home three days later on July 15 and lynched him. (Caption info courtesy eji.org)

Images 2-3: Ruins of the old state capitol, Tuscaloosa, Ala., where Yoholo-Micco, chieftan of the Upper Creek town of Eufala, is said to have addressed the Alabama Legislature in 1836 before departing the ancestral Muscogee homelands on the Trail of Tears. Yoholo-Micco was an ally of US forces against the Red Stick Creek, who fought against colonization and removal.  Yoholo-Micco’s actual words are unknown, but the writers of history have painted the Creek chieftan as one who accepted indigenous removal with an air of romantic resignation.  His apocryphal address reads: "I come here, brothers, to see the great house of Alabama and the men who make laws and say farewell in brotherly kindness before I go to the far west, where my people are now going. In time gone by I have thought that the white men wanted to bring burden and ache of heart among my people in driving them from their homes and yoking them with laws they do not understand. But I have now become satisfied that they are not unfriendly toward us, but that they wish us well. In these lands of Alabama, which have belonged to my forefathers and where their bones lie buried, I see that the Indian fires are going out. Soon they will be cold. New fires are lighting in the west for us, they say, and we will go there. I do not believe our great Father means to harm his red children, but that he wishes us well. We leave behind our good will to the people of Alabama who build the great houses and to the men who make the laws. This is all I have to say."


+++++