The Lynching of Henry "Peg" Gilbert

The Lynching of Henry “Peg” Gilbert tells the story of a man whose unjust death resonates as much today as it did 70 years ago. Gilbert was sitting in church one evening in 1947 when a calf wandered into a nearby road, leading to a sequence of events that seemingly had nothing to do with Gilbert, or with his surprising success for a Black farmer in rural Georgia in the 1940s, but eventually ended in his lynching. He was beaten, tortured, and killed in a jail cell, after being arrested without any evidence that he committed a crime. His death is a searing example of the racial injustice that has led to the death of Black men throughout American history. Two law students at Northeastern University uncovered Gilbert's story through the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project. After proving that Gilbert was lynched and that the legal records lacked evidence for any wrongdoing on his part, their work led to an official apology from the current sheriff of Harris County, Georgia.