WAYLAND, Ky. (WMDJ) – A tragedy that occurred over 100 years ago in Floyd County has been memorialized by a group of local historians.
On Memorial Day, the Floyd County Community Remembrance Coalition placed a historical marker to memorialize the 1924 lynching of a black man, Fred “Kid” Shannon, in Wayland.
The effort, five-years in the making, is part of the Equal Justice Initiative Project of Montgomery, Alabama, to memorialize incidents of racial injustice across the country.
On October 26th, 1924, a mob of 200 masked white men from Floyd County kidnapped and brutally lynched Shannon, a 28-year old musician, who had been arrested and jailed in Wayland for allegedly killing a white man following a monetary dispute. The mob broke into the jail, taking Shannon into the street and shot him at least 18 times.
The historical marker was placed by the old Wayland Jail on Monday. The group also spent the day cleaning up the primarily black cemetery, Spencer Martin Cemetery, on Steele’s Creek in Wayland.
