Up First from NPR - The Sunday Story: Off The Mark, an NPR investigation into America's historical markers

Episode Date: April 21, 2024

Historical markers dot the American landscape. They are on the sides of roads, in parks, rest areas, in the middle of nowhere. They purport to offer a glimpse into the past, marking a moment or place of significance worth remembering. But a year-long investigation by NPR's Laura Sullivan found some of these markers present a fractured and confused telling of the American story. Some share humor and joy but many present a version of history that's been distorted or outright fictionalized with offensive lies.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

I'm Aisha Roscoe, and this is The Sunday Story. Across America, history is often recorded on small markers. You've probably seen them on the sides of roads, in front of buildings, in the middle of nowhere. There are more than 180,000 of these historical markers telling the country's story. NPR's investigations correspondent, Laura Sullivan, has been examining these markers and asking a lot of questions. Laura joins us now to talk about what she's found. Hey, Laura. Hey, Aisha.

So, Laura, before we get any further, you know, I mean, I have to ask, like, why? Like, what got you interested in this particular topic? You know, it really, it really went back to COVID when I was spending a lot of time driving around and I started reading all of these markers. And some were interesting and some were a little bit random and some were really confusing. And then I started reading this one about a Confederate soldier who had hid under a house. And I thought, okay, who wrote this? Like, who is writing these markers? Are these markers even true? And then I kind of went down a rabbit hole. It's probably a very deep rabbit hole with these markers, right? It's so true. I mean, I close my eyes at night and historical markers appear.

But my partner in NPR's Nick McMillan and I were able to take a giant database crowdsourced by hobbyists from all over the country. And we started analyzing the nation's markers, looking for patterns, curiosities, problems. So what did you find? Overall, we basically found a fractured and confused telling of the American story. In many cases, history has been distorted. You see offensive lies that live with impunity. But we also found curiosities. We found humor, joy, and of course, a lot of errors.

And some of them are as funny as they are strange. Well, I'm very into the strange things in life. So what were some of those strange things you found? Well, a lot of states out there, you see them making a lot of bold claims. We have three different states that claim to have been the first to use anesthesia. Both Kentucky and Missouri claim to be the home of Daniel Boone's bones. Maryland and New Jersey both claim to have sent the first telegram. So which one is right? Who knows?

Well, some historian knows. But the thing is, and what's curious about historical markers, is that they can say anything that a state or a private group or even an individual wants them to say. We found more than 35,000 different groups or individuals or people in this country have put up markers. When did people start erecting them? The oldest markers in the database go back to the late 1700s. But really, markers began to take hold in the early part of the 20th century. Cars were becoming more affordable. Highways were getting built. People were getting out into the open road for the first time. That makes sense because when you think of these sort of classic square metal markers, you really do picture them kind of on the side of the road. Exactly. And sometimes they're stone,

sometimes wood. One of my favorites is in Texas, which has a marker claiming to be the home of the first successful airplane flight. Okay, now I'm from North Carolina, and we always say that we are the first in flight. So what is that marker doing in Texas? Exactly. So the marker says it was completed in Texas by a man who was neither of the Wright brothers. Okay, okay. I'm sure people would dispute that. What other sort of curious markers are out there? There are a lot of markers to dead animals. Florida marks a dead alligator named Old Joe. California marks a dead horse also named Old Joe. California thought they had a dead mastodon, but the marker then explained that it was actually a dead circus elephant. That is very different from a mastodon.

It is. It is. And we also found markers to ghosts. There are markers for two witches, one vampire. There was a wizard. There's also a couple a New Hampshire marker says may have been abducted by aliens. But mostly markers highlight the actions of completely dead humans. For example, Arizona marks the grave of a man the local town wrongly hanged for stealing a horse in 1882. It says he was right. We was wrong. Now he's gone.

We was wrong. Oh, my goodness. So, I mean, we have had a real reckoning over how history is told in this country and the symbols that we use, like monuments and street names. There have been a lot of fights over this. Have historical markers drawn that sort of debate? They really haven't. And that's because aside from the hobbyists who've maintained the database for fun, there's no national repository of markers. And many state officials even told us that there was no way to know how many markers are even in their state, you know, what land they sit on or what's on them. Well, that does seem like a recipe for a lot of problems and possibly misinformation. And that's just what we found. We found markers all across this country that tell a version of history that's distorted or even outright false. When we come back, we travel with Laura to visit some of these markers and learn the stories behind their complicated point of view.

Now, Our Change will honor 100 years of the Royal Canadian Air Force and their dedicated service to communities at home and abroad. From the skies to Our Change, this $2 commemorative circulation coin marks their storied past and promising future. Find the limited edition Royal Canadian Air Force $2 coin today. Welcome back to the Sunday Story. I'm here with NPR's Laura Sullivan. She's been investigating the nation's historical markers. And to understand how America is telling its own story, we're heading first to Alabama. Yes. Okay, let me take you to central Alabama, to Tuskegee.

It was a really rainy day. It was storming. And I met with city council member Johnny Ford, who was standing under an awning in the town square. Tuskegee is known as the citadel of the civil rights movement. Booker T. Washington started the National Business League here. Tuskegee was the birthplace of Rosa Parks. It's the home of the Tuskegee Airmen, and Ford points out, close to 90 percent of its residents are Black. But in the center of this square is a stone marker with two carved Confederate flags. It says, Honor the Brave, with God as our vindicator, erected by the

daughters of the Confederacy to the Confederate soldiers of Macon County. That reflects the fight to preserve slavery. That is not a positive sign for us here in our community. That's not a fair message. At the top of the marker, there's also a statue of a Confederate soldier. It's got a gun facing north. Ford and many of the citizens of Tuskegee have been trying to remove the stone marker and the statue for years, but they can't. Because the thing about this marker and thousands of others across the country is that they're owned by private groups.

This one belongs to the United Daughters of the Confederacy, a group made up almost entirely of white women. The county government, which was all white, gave the land to the Daughters of the Confederacy to be used as a park for white people. That's not an exaggeration. The 1906 deed still filed across the street in the courthouse gives the entire town square to the United Daughters for, quote, the purpose of converting the land into a park for white people.

They built it in honor of the Confederate dead, which we respect. Honor their dead, but not in a public place. Put it in a cemetery. Put it in some museum. But museums weren't what the United Daughters were after. We found the Daughters helped erect more than 600 historical markers, far surpassing any other Civil War heritage group, as it constructed a national canvas to rewrite the history of the war. These markers congratulate men for fighting for the cause, the just cause, the sacred cause, the lost cause, which was a racist philosophy claiming, among other things, that Black people enjoyed being enslaved. The markers herald the men's, quote, unsurpassed heroism and patriotic devotion

as they fought to break the country apart to keep men enslaved, or what the markers call their, quote, glorious heritage. One in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, tells a fabricated story about a, quote, faithful Negro. There's one in Grayson County, Texas, which they rededicated in 1996 that says the war efforts of Confederate soldiers will, quote, teach future generations patriotism and Southern chivalry. They put up at least three markers and memorials to Nathan Bedford Forrest, the first Grand Wizard of the Klan. They even put up a marker and conquered North Carolina to the Klan itself. That one's been removed.

Lately, Johnny Ford and the United Daughters have been battling in court. But Ford isn't quite sure who he's fighting. Who mows it and puts these benches out? That's the other injustice. Under my administration, we've spent thousands of dollars taking care of this square.

When is the last time anybody actually talked to one of these ladies? There are no daughters that live here. of this square. When is the last time anybody actually talked to one of these ladies? There are no daughters that live here. I think they're mostly dead. They don't pay any taxes here. They don't live here.

Yet they want to dominate our square. Hi, it's Laura Sullivan for Mr. Hinton. Just one moment. Jay Hinton is a lawyer an hour away in Montgomery. I represent the chapter, the Tuskegee chapter of the United Daughters. The case is pending in front of the Alabama Supreme Court. Hinton acknowledged there are only a couple, if any, United Daughters that live in Tuskegee or the surrounding counties.

When we looked at the group's tax records, we found most of its wealth concentrated around its national headquarters in Richmond, Virginia, where the group has amassed $11 million, with an annual revenue of $1 to $2 million. When I asked why the United Daughters would want to keep a marker in a place they don't live, in a town that doesn't want it, for soldiers who died 160 years ago, Hinton said it's the women's choice to make. He says despite the deed, the group has always allowed everyone to use the park. We're pretty comfortable, and it makes us feel like good citizens to say that we didn't discriminate, and therefore we think we get to keep the dirt because we're doing what we ought to be doing from a constitutional perspective.

Nationwide, though, we found these and other markers from Confederate heritage groups far outnumber similar markers from Union groups, with more than twice as many. It was similar with Confederate hospitals and Confederate cemeteries. We found Civil War markers that vilify the Union, falsify the reasons for the war, and recast Confederate soldiers as the war's true heroes. Markers about them and the Confederacy are prolific, with more than 12,000 mentions. But while the war was fought over slaves and slavery, those words show up only about half as many times. As Confederate groups like the United

Daughters disappeared from Tuskegee and other areas, historical markers gave their organizations lasting and national visibility. The United Daughters put up markers as far away as Arizona, New Mexico, Washington, which weren't even states at the time of the war. Officials with the group did not respond to our request for comment, but in a statement on its website, the organization says their markers, quote, simply represent a memorial to our forefathers who fought bravely and that its members have, quote, stayed quietly in the background, never engaging in public controversy. But that's not what we found. Their archival documents show they've been steeped in racism and the power of

markers for a century. At a conference in 1914, one of the top leaders told the members slaves were, quote, the happiest set of people on the face of the globe and said it was the women's job to, quote, defend the slaveholders using markers and other methods. And they haven't stopped. While other groups have spent the past 20 years taking Confederate symbols down, the United Daughters helped put up 47 more markers, proof that the victors of war do not always get to write its history. Which is what Bryan Stevenson found when he arrived in Montgomery, Alabama in the 1980s, long before he gained national acclaim for his work as executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. When he went looking for a marker about slavery,

he couldn't find one. When I moved to Montgomery in the 1980s, 59 markers and monuments to the Confederacy, almost a preoccupation with mid-19th century history, but you could not find the words slave, slavery, or enslavement anywhere in the city. As the years passed, Stevenson wondered what he could do. So in 2013, he called up the Alabama Historical Association. He says they sounded supportive. I wanted to put up just some markers that talked about the history of slavery. I asked, how do you put up a marker? And they said, oh, just if it's truthful, just give us the information, we'll put it up. And we went to them,

we gave them a 60-page memo documenting the history that we had investigated. And we got an email back saying, yeah, your information's all true and correct, but we can't put up markers about slavery. That would be too controversial. He says it was in this moment that he understood what the United Daughters and other Confederate groups had figured out 100 years earlier. If you want to own the narrative, write it yourself. The Equal Justice Initiative has now put up more than 100 markers

telling the stories of lynchings and racial terror. If we are effective at telling the truth about our history, we will change our relationship to honoring things that are not really honorable. We will. We'll create a new relationship to that. Across town, the Alabama Historical Commission is also trying to create that new relationship. Theo Moore, who at the time was the group's African-American heritage coordinator,

pulled up to a new marker the group put up to Claudette Colvin, a young Black woman who refused to give up her seat on a segregated bus before Rosa Parks. The neighborhood is run down, but the marker towers over the street, solid and shiny. This acts as a reminder to the people in the community and others that this was a place of importance. Although you see what you see around you in regards to the torn down buildings on this side of town, these type of markers is a reminder to everyone that it wasn't once that way. Do you feel like some of this history has been left out?

That's an understatement, honestly. We've been taught the same history, especially in the South. This is how all these stereotypes come about. And so there's one way of basically letting people see another side of our history than what is presented all the time, which is negativity. Moore says he knows it's just a metal sign. Most people don't even read them. But as he gets back in the car, he says they matter. Because how you tell history shapes how you see the future. It sounds like there are some seeds of change underway in some marker programs to tell these new stories, as Bryan Stevenson said, to, quote, change the narrative. But what happens with the old narrative,

especially, you know, if states don't even know how many markers there are or where they're located? It's very difficult to change markers, to take down these old stories. I mean, some of them are 50 years old. Some are 100 years old. It's hard to even figure out who owns them, who owns the land that the marker sits on. We talked to officials in Minnesota, and they told us that there were more than 1,000 markers in their state, and they were able to track down 206 that the state historical society either paid for or helped put up. So they drove out to all of them, and when they got out there, they found that every single one of these markers had a problem from either grammar issues to offensive language. Okay, well,

that doesn't bode well for the kinds of markers that are out there in all these other states. That's right. And meanwhile, three states, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, recently passed laws that say no one can take down any historical marker, no matter how old, wrong, misguided, confusing, or offensive that it might be. So it seems to be an issue where many states are stuck with the markers they have, and in other cases, they're only telling one perspective. Yeah, and that's reminding me, actually actually of something that Theo Moore in Montgomery said as we were wrapping up. He told me that he tried to read

most of the state markers as part of the job. And he said lately that something's been bothering him. All these cities named after Creek Native Americans,

Wetumpka, Tuskegee, Notre Soga, Loja Polka, Opelika, Tuscaloosa, that's all Native American. Right? Where, you know, that's all Native American, right?

Where's their markers? Is he right? I mean, are there markers talking about Native Americans and their history and heritage? I mean, yeah, we found more than 15,000 markers across the country that mentioned Native Americans. But what we found is that the history on them often isn't theirs. I mean, hundreds of them still call Native Americans savages, hostile, or use racial slurs. Is this where we're going next with this story? We are. We're heading to the Midwest, to the frontier, where we found markers that really glorify white settlers but vilify Native Americans.

And I saw this on a recent day in a 170-year-old cemetery in New Ulm, Minnesota. We're in the Pioneer Section Tract A, and that's where the Dakota war burials are. Darla Gebhardt is a historian and researcher here with the Brown County Historical Society, and she took me through the cemetery. We're going to head right over here. She walks past row after row of faded gravestones until she reaches a small clearing. So here it is. Oh, it looks very old. In front of her is a soapstone and marble marker, an obelisk, each side carved with writing.

It begins, In memory of those who fell in the defense of New Ulm in 1862. On this side, it honors those who were... In memory of those who... Something by the Indians. Yeah, yeah. And I believe that that word might be massacred. Massacred by the Indians. Yeah, yeah, and I believe that that word might be massacred, massacred by the Indians, and that is an objectionable word today.

Objectionable, Gebhardt explains, because it takes sides. And if there are two sides on the American frontier, NPR found the nation's historical markers come down solidly on the side of white settlers. We found at least 200 markers that tell an eerily similar story. Native Americans killed innocent white settlers in cold blood. Gebhardt knows this tale well. I'll show you what was going through their mind if we come over here, and you'll see the gravity of it. She stops in the middle of several dozen gravestones.

These are the people that were killed. The names have faded with time. John Schneider, Julius Fenske, Ernst Dietrich. But the writing underneath is clear. Killed by Indians. Killed by Indians. Killed by Indians. You have entire families that lost their lives. This is what the reality was for them in 1862. This was the reality for many people who lived here. It just wasn't the reality for all the people who lived here.

The direction we're facing now is basically south, and we're looking out over what would have been in 1862 the Tallgrass Prairie. John Robertson is a member of the Sisseton-Wapitan tribe and descendant of Minnesota Dakotas. He's standing at the edge of an expansive field in southern Minnesota known as Chanseyapi. It's homeland of the Lower Sioux Indian community in an area the federal government calls the Lower Sioux Agency. Even today, you don't see any trees, and that's the way it would have been for 250 miles. This grassy prairie is a story full of twists and turns, the most recent being three years ago when Minnesota agreed to return 114 acres to the tribe, acknowledging the land had never belonged to the state in the first place. When

tribal members took possession of the property, they also happened to take over management of 22 state historical signs. Robertson says many of them told a similar story. You know, at this point, this poor settler family was massacred, blah, blah, blah, and they had no defenses. The women were violated and the children were taken, blah, blah, blah. I mean, that's the kind of language that are on these markers. The signs wind their way along a series of trails. Robertson says tribal members spent a long time considering each one.

And then they made a decision. They decided to take them all down. They decided they wanted to tell their own story. On a recent day, I went with Robertson and a team of people as they headed out on the trails to see how the signs were coming along. As the crew banged new signs into the ground, they tossed the old ones into a heap on the grass. Robertson says it wasn't just the ones that called them savages or described violent acts that troubled him. It was all the signs that didn't even mention them, as if the tribe's history here hadn't happened at all. To show what he means by this, Robertson walks over to an old stone building. Standing

next to him is Amber Annis. She's Cheyenne River Lakota and vice president with the Minnesota Historical Society, which is helping replace the signs. Annis picks up the old sign. It says Stone Warehouse across the top. She reads the rest. It is 43 by 23 feet, 20 feet in height, with a good substantial cellar 8 feet deep. The cellar walls are 3 feet, the first story walls 2 feet, and the second story walls 18 inches thick. Period. That's it. Robertson shakes his head. The sign, with all its dimensions, isn't wrong, he says.

It's oblivious. The stone warehouse was the spark that started the U.S.-Dakota wars. This was the flashpoints of the actual war beginning here and the establishment of the conquered status of the Dakota nation. It's the reason all those white settlers in the cemetery died and an untold number of Dakotas with them. This contained all of the food that was to be distributed to each family. The Dakotas were once one of the most formidable forces in the Americas. They were known for their brilliant political and military strategy. But after the U.S. government took their land and prohibited them from hunting or farming, the tribe was forced to accept a

treaty. One of the things it promised was food payments from the stone warehouse. Except in the summer of 1862, the government, mired in the Civil War, stopped providing food. According to letters from the time, the federal agent in charge locked the warehouse, and the main trader told the Dakotas they could, quote, eat grass or their own dung. Facing starvation after years of broken promises, the Dakotas declared war. What does the new sign say? Eon Ohinakpi Tipi. So that would be place of storage house. The warehouse was a central scene during the outbreak of the U.S.-Dakota War in 1862. Its contents were burned out during the war, but the structure remained. The sign goes on to explain the dire situation the Dakotas were facing.

And as Robertson and Annis continue down the gravel path, each new sign tells another piece of the story. The loss of the land, the arrival of the Europeans, the decimation of the tribe. Amber Annis says that Native Americans are used to markers telling only one of two stories. Their ancestors were either psychopathic murderers or inept victims who disappeared. Being Native, you grow up, wherever you go, you know it's going to be something that's not true. I have two daughters, my children. I think about them a lot and how when they come to places like this, they'll be able to see themselves as young Native children in different ways.

Some of the new signs detail the Dakota's military successes, including a stunning victory over a brigade of soldiers on the river. But Robertson and Annis know how the story ends. The federal government marshaled hundreds of soldiers until the Dakotas surrendered, executed 38 of them without a trial, and removed the rest of the tribe from Minnesota. Roberson says he's not trying to change that history. He's trying to explain why it mattered. Hopefully, when you read it, the sign is going to speak to you in a different and continuing way.

That's the goal of the sign. Then you would say, I heard something about that, or I want to know more about that, and it's going to be alive for you. I hope. Throughout the state, though, the signs speak the same way they did a hundred years ago. One in New Ulm tells how, quote, savages massacred nearly all the whites. Another uses a racial slur and concludes Native Americans, quote, had no pity for women or children. So now we're on the Brown County courthouse lawn.

Darla Gebhardt, the Brown County historian, makes her way up a patch of grass to a large marker honoring the pioneers. It's paying homage to the pioneers who founded the territory of Minnesota. But couldn't the Dakotas say that they founded the area? Oh, absolutely. Yes, absolutely. And so if Dakota would put up a marker saying, this is our homeland, they would be absolutely correct in doing so. But this idea of dueling markers,

that stories that can be told in two ways should be told in two ways, is problematic for historians. What if people only see one sign? What if people want the old signs because they just like the old stories better? One of Minnesota's most beloved settler families is, after all, that of Laura Ingalls Wilder. What is lesser known is that for a time, the Wilders built a home on tribal land without permission, land that belonged to the Osage Nation. These two true stories, one of courageous families who helped build a nation, and another of Native families who lost nations, can be told together. But they rarely are. On the back of the courthouse pioneer marker in New Ulm is the name of every town resident who died in the U.S.-Dakota wars fighting for their families.

We couldn't find any marker in Minnesota that lists the names of the Dakotas who died fighting for theirs. Darla Gebhardt said a member of the Dakotas asked her about this once. I was doing a downtown tour with a Dakota person, and she asked me, what do people in Nuam think about the Dakota War? And I said, they don't. And then this person said, well, why is that? And I said, because we won. Okay, so let me ask you something. When Darla Gebhard says, we question about historical markers. Who were they written for? The we that makes up New Ulm today is all kinds of people. I mean, the residents are just as likely to be descendants of pioneers as they are Native Americans.

There's immigrants, old immigrants, also new immigrants. I mean, there's Californians who escaped COVID. So many markers, it seems, have been meant to entertain travelers. But now, after a century and with so many of them, it does seem like they've become a sort of history book for the nation. To me, they almost seem like the nation's first social media campaign. You know, kind of an analog one, to be sure. But just like with social media, there is hate.

There's also joy as well. And even in some rare instances, sometimes markers can unlock long forgotten secrets. So I'm sensing that you have one more place in mind to go. I do. I have one more place. Okay. And so where are we headed now? Well, if you want to understand just how much power historical markers can wield, we have to go back to Alabama, to a dusty two-lane highway outside Gadsden. When we come back, Laura tells us the story of a marker that uncovered secrets about an unsolved murder.

I've just met up with Jerry Smith. He's a local from the Gadsden area in Alabama. And he's pulling his car onto the highway. And he's taking me to a place where someone was murdered. Do you want to go kind of north? Let's start chronologically where you first saw him. I'm going to go further than that. I'm going to go to the place that got his ass killed. Smith heads down US 11, just a few miles outside Gadsden.

What is Gadsden known for? Not a damn thing. But that's not entirely true. At least not anymore. Because just a little bit down this road, there's a brand new historical marker that says otherwise. It's a tale that began 61 years ago when a teenage Jerry Smith was driving down this very road. In the car I was driving when all this happened was a real classic. It was a 1962 Chevrolet Corvair.

You know what that is? You want to know this kind of stuff? I do. I want to know everything. As Smith came down the road one spring afternoon in 1963, he spotted a strange man walking with a sign over his body, pulling a wagon. He was white, maybe in his 30s, in a button down shirt. Smith remembers not liking the sight of him. He could tell the man wasn't from here. He was what Alabama's then-governor George Wallace had warned about. His favorite term was outside agitators. If they would leave us alone in Alabama, everything is fine. But these outside agitators are fanning racial fire. Well, As he slowed down to pass the man, Smith was surprised to see.

He looked just like any other guy. Smith remembers thinking, he doesn't seem so bad. The two locked eyes. Smith thinks the man may have even smiled a little. So when just a couple hours later, someone shot the man, point blank, and left his body on the side of this road, Smith was deeply troubled. And yet he knew better than to talk about it.

There was a lot of people that thought, this guy walking down the road pulling a buggy, we didn't need him. And there were some people, that guy, he's not fit for being here. We ought to kill him, you know. The guy's name was William Moore. He was a postal worker from Baltimore who, Smith correctly deduced, was walking across Alabama as part of a one-man civil rights protest. His sign said, equal rights for all. His murder's never been solved, at least not officially. It bothered Smith for years, but what bothered him more was the silence.

The years passed by. Other things happened. This lost significance in the eyes of Alabamians. Smith wondered what could he do, and then one day as he was driving, it dawned on him. I thought at least we ought to have a plaque. Smith says when he first pitched the idea, people in town didn't like it. Let the past lie, they told him. One person even messaged him on Facebook saying it might be dangerous. But he just kept talking about it, calling people. Eventually, some people said they would donate to it. And then he went and made a speech in front of the county commission, and they voted unanimously to pay for it. The Alabama Historical Association helped him write it. Smith walks over to the new black and gold marker on a gravel patch between the road and the train tracks. We're at the site of the assassination.

Wow. William Lewis Moore was a white postal worker raised by grandparents in rural Mississippi. He was assassinated at this location during a 400-mile protest march from Chattanooga, Tennessee to Jackson, Mississippi. Yeah, yeah. Smith circles around back to make sure the marker's holding up. On the day it was unveiled, several dozen people came out in the rain to see it. Someone even left flowers at its base. Here comes a train.

This is Norfolk Southern, main line. The train barrels through just like it did on the day William Moore pulled his wagon down this road. Except now his death is no longer a community secret. It's history. Public history. It says so right here on the sign. And ever since it went up, something strange has started to happen. People are talking about the murder. And Smith says he'll tell me what many people in this town already know.

This was a store. He takes me to an abandoned general store. It still has 1950s gas pumps out front. And here was a confrontation between Floyd Simpson and William Moore. Smith says a local man named Floyd Simpson confronted William Moore in this parking lot. You can hear lots of people talk about it now, at the diner, at the town museum, even the local sheriff's office. He's the one that everyone thought did it, thinks did it.

Johnny Grant is the county's assistant sheriff. He's spent the last 48 years in law enforcement here. He's never talked about Simpson publicly before. On the night of the murder, he hadn't joined the department yet, but some of his closest friends were on duty. He says they all suspected Floyd Simpson. Grant even quietly reinvestigated the case when he became chief investigator to see if more could be done.

But Simpson was already dead. He died 26 years ago. Everything I've seen, he was high up in the Ku Klux Klan. Floyd Simpson was. Floyd was. Simpson was. And you saw that in the records? I did. The whole idea wasn't too much of a stretch. First, there was the public confrontation.

Then a witness saw what looked like Simpson's Buick sitting on the side of the road just before the murder. And then a state forensic technician said he believed the bullet matched Simpson's gun. But the grand jury declined to indict him. And the town put the whole thing behind them. Evidence to me, I would have charged him. And I would have been able to charge him now with how many years later. But, you know, they took it to a grand jury,

and the grand jury refused to indict him. Today, Grant is also an Etowah County commissioner. When Jerry Smith came forward one day asking for marker money, Grant quickly voted yes. He says he wanted the story told. That was just hate. It'll always be a black eye out of the walk county. I just hope as a retired law enforcement that they did everything they could to solve it.

So it strikes me hearing him call it a black eye, that that black eye on the town is now on the side of the road for everyone to see. That's true. It is. But it's also, it's a symbol of change. You know, it's a reminder in some ways of what can happen when secrets are allowed to see the light of day. Grant, the county commissioner, told me that it was one of the best things that the county has done. And the story of William Moore is now a part of the American story. Exactly. It's one more small slice of it written across this American landscape. In so many ways, markers are the country at its best. We also found it's the country at its best. We also found it's the country at its worst.

You know, people erect these markers hoping to take a moment in time and make it permanent. But despite humans' best efforts, history and how we all see the past, it just keeps changing anyway. So do you think you'll keep stopping to read these historical markers when you're driving around or walking around and come across one? Without question. But maybe with a grain of salt. Let's put it that way. But whether they are right or wrong, they are all windows into the nation's history. Thank you so much, Laura, for all of your hard work and telling such an important story.

Thanks so much for having me. That's NPR investigations correspondent Laura Sullivan. This episode was produced by Abby Wendell and edited by Jenny Schmidt and Liana Simstrom. Nick McMillan helped report this episode along with NPR's investigations team. Robert Little was the editor. Fact-checking by Barbara Van Workum. Mastering by Robert Rodriguez. Special thanks to Tilda Wilson

and Terza Christopher. The Sunday Story team includes Justine Yan and Andrew Mambo. Our supervising producer is Liana Simstrom and Irene Noguchi is our executive producer. I'm Aisha Roscoe. Up First is back tomorrow with all the news you need to start your week. Until then, have a great rest of your weekend.