A beautiful view and then a sober reminder of another dark time in America's past. The marker has the same text on both sides. It reads, "Leonard Woods, a black coal miner from Jenkins, KY, was lynched near here on the night of 29-30 Nov. 1927. Officers had arrested Woods for allegedly killing Herschel Deaton, a white man from Coeburn, VA, and had taken him to the Whitesburg, KY jail. On the day of Deaton's funeral, a white mob numbering in the hundreds broke into the jail and brought Woods close to this spot, where they hanged, shot, and burned him. No one was ever arrested. In the aftermath, at the urging of Norfolk editor Louis Jaffé, Norton's Bruce Crawford, and other journalists, VA Gov. Harry F. Byrd worked with the General Assembly early in 1928 to pass the nation's first law defining lynching as a state crime." In the months that followed, Virginia's newspapers debated not only the brutality of the killing but also the complicity of silence in both states, making the Woods case one of the rare Appalachian lynchings that forced a sustained, public reckoning with racial violence in the mountain South. It is marker number XB-27 and it was erected in 2021 by the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. There is plenty of room to stop here, read the marker and think about those events. [Review 76 of 2026 - 1522 in Virginia - 25266 overall] read more

Leonard Woods Historical Marker - Leonard Woods Historical Marker, Pound VA - Landmarks & Historical Buildings Near Me - Pound, Virginia

See all