Maryland Governor Issues Blanket Pardon For Lynching Victims

Gov. Larry Hogan granted posthumous pardons to 34 victims of lynching. His office said he was the first governor to do so.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) on Saturday granted posthumous pardons to 34 lynching victims. His office said it was the first time a governor had issued a “blanket pardon” of this kind. Some children were among those pardoned, including Howard Cooper, a 15-year-old Black boy who was hanged by a white mob in 1885, and 13-year-old Frederick “whose full name was lost to history,” Hogan said. The governor signed the pardons at an event memorializing Howard, who was killed after an all-white jury found him guilty of raping a white woman. The woman never testified, but the jury reportedly reached its verdict in under a minute. Before Howard’s attorneys were able to appeal the conviction to the U.S. Supreme Court, the boy was dragged from a Baltimore County jailhouse by an angry mob and hanged on a nearby sycamore tree.