Which Ohio counties are represented by EJI’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice and what local markers exist in those counties?
Executive summary
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, includes a monument for every U.S. county EJI documented as the site of racial terror lynchings; those county-plates and duplicate markers are intended to be claimed by local communities as part of EJI’s Community Remembrance Project [1] [2]. In Ohio, reporting tied to EJI’s projects identifies at least three counties explicitly connected to memorial work — Athens, Butler, and Coshocton — each with documented local marker activity or soil collections noted in EJI-related coverage [3] [4].
1. How the memorial represents counties — the national design and the “waiting” county markers
The memorial’s core installation is a field of hanging steel rectangles — one for each county where EJI documented a lynching — and a separate field of duplicate, ground‑laid monuments that EJI describes as “waiting” to be claimed and returned to the counties they represent as part of local truth‑telling efforts [1] [2]. EJI explicitly frames the placement of a county’s monument at home as the culmination of its Community Remembrance Project work — a local engagement process involving research, public discussion, and often soil collection and marker erection [1] [5].
2. Athens County, Ohio — soil, a coalition, and a historical marker for Christopher Davis
Athens County’s involvement with EJI’s project is recorded in community accounts: local organizers collected soil for the National Memorial and placed soil both at the memorial and at the Southeast Ohio History Center, and the Christopher Davis Community Remembrance Project partnered with EJI to install a historical marker in Athens memorializing the 1881 lynching of Christopher Davis [3]. The source notes EJI staff participation in the soil collection event and a June 2020 marker installation overseen by the local coalition in partnership with EJI [3].
3. Butler County, Ohio — local coalition and a marker for Simeon Garnet and Henry Corbin
EJI’s Community Historical Marker Project lists Butler County among Ohio counties where a local coalition worked with EJI to erect a marker; the Truth and Justice Project Coalition in Oxford partnered with EJI to memorialize Simeon Garnet (lynched 1877) and Henry Corbin (lynched 1892) with a historical marker unveiled in June 2021 [4]. That entry is part of EJI’s public catalog of community partnerships that have produced local markers across multiple states [4] [5].
4. Coshocton County, Ohio — courthouse marker for Henry Howard
EJI’s Community Historical Marker Project also documents a Coshocton County project: a grassroots coalition installed a historical marker at the Coshocton County Courthouse in June 2022 memorializing Henry Howard, who was lynched on the court square in 1885 [4]. This project is cited alongside other county-level markers that EJI highlights as examples of local reckoning work [4].
5. What is known — and what remains uncertain — about Ohio’s full representation
EJI’s online resources and memorial exhibit allow searches by state and county for documented lynchings, and the organization reports that more than 80 historical markers have been installed nationally with over 200 coalitions active — meaning Ohio may have additional counties either represented at the memorial or engaged in marker work beyond the ones explicitly named in the sources provided [3] [5]. The National Memorial’s duplicate markers intentionally act as a public register of which counties have claimed monuments and which have not, but the sources here do not supply a complete, state‑by‑state inventory of every Ohio county represented in the memorial’s 805 county monuments [2] [6].
6. Takeaway: documented Ohio projects and the larger local‑claiming process
Based on the reporting reviewed, Athens, Butler, and Coshocton counties in Ohio have documented, EJI‑supported local activities — soil collection, coalitions, and installed historical markers — connected to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and the Community Remembrance Project [3] [4]. The memorial itself contains county monuments for every documented lynching county nationally, and duplicate monuments at the site are intended to be claimed by counties that complete EJI’s local commemoration process; however, a comprehensive list of every Ohio county represented at the memorial or the full roster of Ohio marker projects is not provided in the materials reviewed [1] [2] [5].