A Missouri city doubles down on rejecting lynching monument in memory of John Buckner

John Buckner was killed by a mob in Valley Park in 1894, but no one was ever prosecuted for his killing. The city claims the lynching did not happen within its boundaries, despite multiple newspaper accounts at the time.
When a mob lynched John Buckner in 1894, hanging him from a bridge over the Meramec River, newspaper accounts described the reaction from the residents of Valley Park. They were unbothered by the killing of the 21-year-old Black man.

“Whenever the lynching of John Buckner is talked of,” one story noted, “it is discussed as a good work well done.”

Nearly 130 years later, cities across the country, including in the St. Louis region, are reckoning with the legacy of the lynchings that swept the nation after the Civil War. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, which is leading a national effort to establish memorials to lynching victims, Buckner was one of at least 68 Black people lynched in Missouri between 1863 and 1950.

“Missouri had the highest number of lynchings of any state outside the South,” said Geoff Ward, a professor of African and African American Studies at Washington University. He is also a member of the Reparative Justice Coalition of St. Louis, which is working with the Equal Justice Initiative to place local memorials.