Montgomery County commission highlights markers for three lynching victims and urges reconciliation

The Commission on Remembrance and Reconciliation told Montgomery County officials it has installed three markers and collected soil samples at sites where three Black men were lynched, naming the victims and calling the work an early step in a long path toward truth and reconciliation.

Jason Green, a member of the commission, said the commission was formed by a 2019 county council resolution sponsored by Council member Will Giwando and former council members Hans Riemer and Craig Rice and that the markers aim to "give a sense of the life that these men lived" rather than only record how they died. "I can date my family back to Quince Orchard into the 1830s," Green said, describing his personal connection to the countys Black history.

A committee member said the commissions work was inspired by the national advocacy of Bryan Stevenson and placed the events in Reconstruction-era context: "This Reconstruction era, where unfortunately, racial terror lynchings occurred across the country, including right here in Montgomery County," the committee member said. Another committee member named the three men as John Diggs Dorsey, Sydney Randolph and George Peck and said that two of them were dragged out of the county building and lynched nearby while mobs watched, calling those killings "state-supported terror." The speaker added that "no one ever was held accountable for those deaths."

The commission said it has established two markers in Rockville and one in Poolesville and has taken soil samples from those sites as part of commemoration efforts. Officials described the markers as narrative in purpose: to summarize life stories, give context about the events that preceded the deaths and resist efforts to erase or rewrite this history.

Speakers tied the work to broader local preservation: they cited other county markers recognizing fair-housing efforts, including a marker for the Romeo and Elise Herrad House and a Beltway March of 1966 marker, and pointed to the Pleasant View Historic Site in Gaithersburg and other historic Black neighborhoods as part of the countys shared history.

The commission did not take formal action at the meeting recorded in the transcript. Speakers said reconciliation will be a long process that begins with truth and sustained community engagement; the commission said it will continue to document sites and share narrative histories as part of its work.