Ohio’s anti-lynching history served as model for other states

With the encouragement and help of Marcus Hanna, Ohio Republican president maker, Harry Smith was elected to the state legislature in 1893 and worked tirelessly to get an anti-lynching bill passed. He got a Civil Rights act passed in 1894 and in 1896 the toughest anti-lynching act in the United States, the Smith Act. In 1897, “Click Mitchell” was lynched in Urbana after allegedly assaulting the widow of a prominent citizen. After the lynching, Mitchell was proved innocent. Under the Smith Act, his relatives sued the community and won $10,000. The Smith Act became a model for other states.

The federal government, despite over 200 attempts and thousands of lynchings, until earlier this month never passed an anti-lynching bill because of Southern resistance. A federal act is necessary — remember that the state prosecutor in the Ahmaud Arbery murder declined prosecution even after reviewing the tapes that showed his brutal, unprovoked killing was a lynching.

The Smith Act did not stop all Ohio lynchings or white on Black violence such as the Springfield riots, but it put Ohio in a class all of its own in speaking up for racial justice.

David Madden is a retired trial attorney, a mentor at the University of Dayton Law School and a spokesperson for the ACLU.