‘There he was hanged from a locust tree’: Identity of 3 DC-area lynching victims revealed by Maryland commission

George Washington Peck of Poolesville, was reportedly found struggling with a white girl and accused of attempted rape before he was lynched in 1880.

“An angry white mob soon gathered, seizing Mr. Peck, forcing a noose around his neck and dragging him to the vacant lot across from the Poolesville Presbyterian Church. There he was hanged from a locust tree,” said Maya Davis, chair of the Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture.

She explained to visitors in attendance at the Universities at Shady Grove that, at the time, Montgomery County was a rural area consisting of small farms raising corn and tobacco. The population was about 25,000, a third of whom were Black.

Six months later, the county registered its 2nd lynching — that of John Diggs Dorsey who was a laborer living in Darnestown.

Accused of sexually assaulting his employer’s wife, Diggs Dorsey was taken into custody following a 2-day manhunt. But a white mob of 30-40 men showed up at the Rockville jail and grabbed Diggs Dorsey.

“They made the prisoner walk in shackles about a mile outside town on Route 28. There they hung him from the limb of a large cherry tree. In the morning, several hundred white people gathered around the body, cutting the rope into pieces for souvenirs,” Davis said.

The third lynching in Montgomery County occurred in 1896, following a vicious ax attack on a family in Gaithersburg. A stranger in town from Milledgeville, Georgia, named Sidney Randolph was taken into custody while walking along Muddy Branch Road. It was Independence Day.

“On July 4, a mass mob of white men dragged him from his cell in the Rockville jail, brutally beat him and hanged him from a tree just outside of town along Route 355,” Davis said.

The state commission was told there are no known descendants of Peck, Diggs Dorsey or Randolph.

“The culture and the legacy of lynching created an environment of racial terror and fear for a lot of individuals, not just though who are contemporaries of the lynching victims but of those who followed them: the descendants. It created intergenerational trauma that is not easy to escape,” said Teisha Dupree-Wilson, a history professor at Copping State University and member of the commission.

The next public commission meeting is schedule for Monday, Oct. 7, at 11:30 a.m. at Bowie State University. A public hearing is scheduled weeks later in Harford and Cecil counties on Saturday, Oct. 26 at 10 a.m. More information on previous and upcoming meetings is available online.

The state’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s work Saturday is an outgrowth of years of research. It was established in 2019 to investigate unlawful killings of African Americans by white mob violence throughout Maryland’s history.

“The commission researches cases of lynching throughout the state and holds public hearings in communities where lynchings took place to shine a light on the dark legacy of lynching in Maryland and its enduring impacts on the Black community and communities of color,” a release on the meeting said. “At the heart of the MLTRC’s mission is the pursuit of justice and healing for the victims of lynching and their descendants.”

WTOP’s Ivy Lyons contributed to this report.

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