Entry 3: Soil Collection
Jars filled with soil collected from the site of Henry Howard’s lynching, June 19, 2021 (Lucy Bryan)
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about soil in the last couple of weeks. This isn’t the first time I’ve thought about soil. There was that battle with blossom end rot in my garden tomatoes many years back, caused by a calcium deficiency in the soil. And there was Kristen Ohlson’s fabulous book The Soil Will Save Us—one of the few hopeful books I’ve read about stemming the climate crisis. When walking in the woods, I often think about mycelia, how in the soil beneath my feet, the trees are exchanging information and resources through a hidden network of fungal filaments.
But the thinking I’ve been doing recently has more to do with how soil holds the collective memories of the places we inhabit. A week ago today, I helped lead our community’s first Juneteenth celebration. At that event, we memorialized a Black man named Henry Howard who had been lynched on Coshocton’s court square exactly 136 years beforehand, on June 19, 1885. As part of the Equal Justice Initiative’s Community Remembrance Project, we scooped soil from the site of the lynching into jars that will be displayed at the Legacy Museum in Alabama, our local courthouse, and a local museum.
It ended up being my responsibility to prepare the soil for Saturday’s ceremony. I was instructed to dry it out in the sun and to remove debris. The work ended up being harder than I expected. I spent more than an hour removing twigs, rocks, leaves, and grubs from several gallons of soil and breaking up the tight clods of clay that had hardened in the sun. Interacting with that soil also ended up being a surprisingly spiritual experience. It's been a long time since I've been to church. An even longer time since I've felt the presence of the divine. But as I broke clumps of soil with my bare hands to prepare it for Saturday's ceremony, I knew I was on holy ground. I thought of the blood this soil held (either symbolically or literally). I thought how far Henry Howard (a Florida native, like me) was from home when he was murdered. I thought of his mother, how she never got to hold his broken body—how everyone who ever loved him was deprived of the chance to properly mourn him or to visit his grave. I thought of how nothing but hatred was directed at that body before it was unceremoniously disposed of in a potter's field. And I cried as my hands worked that soil. Then, an image of Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James came to mind. I could see them preparing Jesus' broken, crucified body for burial. I felt, in that moment, I was working alongside them.
Both preparing the soil and the soil collection ceremony itself ended up being powerful experiences that allowed me to connect to my place in deep and new ways. Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, has written of the soil this way: “In this soil, there is the sweat of the enslaved. In the soil there is the blood of victims of racial violence and lynching. There are tears in the soil from all those who labored under the indignation and humiliation of segregation. But in the soil there is also the opportunity for new life, a chance to grow something hopeful and healing for the future.”
As part of the soil collection ceremony, our community vocally committed to “continuing the necessary work of truth-telling, of confronting the myth of racial difference, and of leading authentic endeavors toward justice, healing, and hope.” I am proud to be part of this work in this place.
