LEESBURG, Va. — Juneteenth, or June 19, commemorates the day where all enslaved people in the country found out they were given their freedom, in 1865. Now June 19 is also the day that 14-year-old Orion Anderson, the youngest victim of lynching in Loudoun County, received a memorial in his honor.
Attorney General Mark Herring spoke at the ceremony in Leesburg, Virginia on Wednesday. The Orion Anderson Remembrance Memorial for Peace and Justice is the first lynching memorial in Northern Virginia.
The ceremony included a processional from the site of the Old Jail House to the intersection of Harrison St., and the Washington and Old Dominion Trail -- where Anderson was lynched in 1889.
"Lynching is a stain on the soul of this nation," Herring said in a press release. "It was a sustained, concerted, unforgivable campaign of terror designed to subjugate, intimidate, and dehumanize African Americans."
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The memorial will now stand at the place where Anderson was hanged and shot 130 years ago, aiming to work toward fixing a statewide wrong.
"Here in Loudoun, and here in Virginia, we cannot bury the uncomfortable parts of our history," Herring said. "We cannot pretend that the campaign of racial terror that was lynching did not happen."
But Loudoun County's NAACP chapter said just two percent of the Commonwealth's historic markers are connected to men and women of color.
"Ignoring this painful part of our history makes it too easy to forget it," Herring said. "And we cannot rectify the legacy of racism and white supremacy until we confront it. And when we forget, we make it possible for the sins of the past to be repeated, which we must never do."
Herring hopes this memorial serves as a reminder to to fight back in the face of hate.
"Orion Anderson’s life ended here in 1889," Herring said. "But with this marker, his name, and his story, will live on."