Standing firmly in the yard of the Old Sussex County Courthouse, in the town of Georgetown, is a grotesque remnant of Delaware's violent past. Delaware was the last state by far to abolish corporal punishment by whipping post in 1972. In fact, the last public flogging occurred within recent memory - 1952. This concrete post memorializes and perpetuates state sanctioned brutality and excessive use of force. It enforces a criminal justice system that has historically oppressed and targeted Black and Indigenous people of color in Delaware. 

In 1947, Robert Caldwell, a University of Delaware sociologist, wrote that between 1900 and 1945 a total of 1,604 whippings were administered by law in Delaware. At least 66% of those publicly punished were Black men. Women were also victims of this brutality, and for a period prior to 1889, in addition to men, only Black women were flogged. 

There is no doubt that this inhumane punishment was racially charged. 

Our effort calls to dismantle this hateful relic. We need, at the very least, to create a plaque that recognizes these facts. We should remove the post from public space and install it in a historical display that discusses the racial inequalities of the past to provide context and perspective for viewers. Ultimately, we are asking the state of Delaware to take accountability for state sanctioned injustices committed during the Jim Crow era.