Remembrance Event for Benjamin Thomas
Friday, August 28, 2026
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- 5:30-6:30 p.m. Tours of Shiloh's Historic Sanctuary, 1400 Duke Street
- 5:30-6:30 p.m. Tours of Freedom House Museum, 1315 Duke Street
- 7-8 p.m. (doors open 6:30), Program, Shiloh Baptist Church, 1401 Jamieson Avenue
Benjamin Thomas was lynched on August 8, 1899. We invite the public to visit the historic marker on the southwest corner of Fairfax and King Street in remembrance of him.
This year, we will observe the Remembrance for Benjamin Thomas on Friday, August 28 with A Conversation about Civil Rights in Uncertain Times. This hour-long program of music and conversation featuring NAACP’s Deputy General Counsel Myesha Braden, is being held at Shiloh on the same day that the Black community met in 1899 to condemn Thomas’ lynching and protest racial violence. The program will also feature music by Charles E. Miller and remarks from Mayor Alyia Gaskins.
Deputy General Counsel Braden, a Tulane Law Graduate, has spent her entire career working on civil rights, she has served in leadership positions at the Department of Justice, in the Obama White House and in the nonprofit world. Mr. Miller, a performer and educator, has performed genres from classical to gospel with the Washington National Opera and the Maryland Lyric Opera and has toured the world.
Mob Violence Against Young African American
An Alexandria teen was dragged down Saint Asaph Street in the dead of night by a violent mob. The 16-year-old Black youth was accused of disrespecting a seven-year-old white girl who lived next door to him on Aug. 7, 1899. Benjamin Thomas was arrested that evening and had a hearing the following day after which he was sent to the Jail on Saint Asaph and Princess Street to await a grand jury. That night, a mob easily overcame police, took the youth and killed him after beating, dragging, hanging and shooting him. Had a grand jury met, most Alexandrians believe Benjamin Thomas would not have been indicted. City Officials made it clear they didn’t intend to bring charges against any one who participated. In response, many African Americans in the region refused to work. A Mass Meeting and Memorial for Thomas was held on Aug. 28 at Shiloh Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia.
These Are Not Ordinary Times
An unwillingness to be honest about our nation’s past has led to a number of national policies and major court decisions that are negatively impacting millions of American citizens. Multiple voices are pointing to our inability to acknowledge the role race has and still plays in this nation as central to a significant deterioration of civil and political rights.
“This country has never created a relationship to our history of racial violence, of enslavement, of lynching, of the abuse of “other people” who are disfavored, according to the Equal Justice Initiative’s Founder Bryan Stevenson....
In the News
A Dangerous Age, Out of the Attic, Alexandria Times, August 6, 2026.
The Lynching of Benjamin Thomas: A Narrative
Around midnight on August 8,1899, a 16-year-old African American teenager named Benjamin Thomas was lynched in Alexandria, Virginia. A white terror mob comprised of Alexandria citizens attacked the city jail on St. Asaph Street, and Benjamin Thomas was dragged half a mile to the southwest corner of King and Fairfax streets, opposite Market Square.
Accused by his next door neighbor’s seven-year-old daughter of assault and arrested on the child’s testimony alone, Thomas never wavered in his assertion of his innocence. In the aftermath, both Black and white Alexandrians believed he was innocent. News of his murder, after local Black leadership warned authorities of a threat to lynch him, caused work stoppages around the region.
On Monday, Aug. 28, 1899, more than 600 people attended a mass meeting at Shiloh Baptist Church for two reasons, to memorialize Benjamin Thompson and to protest his lynching. At the packed event, leaders from churches in Alexandria and the District, called for an economic boycott of any business associated with those who took part in the mob.
The full account of this hate crime was methodically researched by the 13-member Research Committee of the Alexandria Community Remembrance Project.
Alexandria Community Remembrance Project (ACRP)
ACRP is a city-wide initiative dedicated to helping Alexandria understand its history of racial terror hate crimes. ACRP conducts research, education, programs, and events that remember Joseph McCoy and Benjamin Thomas and explores the long-term impacts upon Alexandria’s African American community. Working with the Equal Justice Initiative Remembrance Project, ACRP will receive a steel pillar that memorializes McCoy and Thomas and with it will create a permanent space for remembrance in Alexandria City. The work of ACRP is an effort to establish a welcoming community bound by equity and inclusion for all people.
Benjamin Thomas and Joseph McCoy are the only two documented Alexandria lynchings so far. McCoy was lynched on April 23, 1897. This year is the 125th anniversary of that event. It was commemorated on that date.
Past Memorials for Benjamin Thomas
View previous In Memoriam pages.
Also see In Memoriam pages for Joseph McCoy.
Read the ACRP Newsletter.