We can’t have an honest conversation about why our grandmothers—and their mothers before them—often prescribed silence in the face of pain without ack
We can’t have an honest conversation about why our grandmothers—and their mothers before them—often prescribed silence in the face of pain without acknowledging the brutal truth: women who dared to speak were met with unspeakable cruelty. What may seem like “meanness” or emotional coldness was, in many cases, survival strategy passed down through generations.
This conditioning didn’t come from nowhere. It came from watching what happened to women like Mary Turner. Women who grieved out loud. Women who told the truth. Women who refused to stay quiet—and paid for it with their lives. Before we judge the silence, we must remember the fear that built it.
Some women who came before us were conditioned into silence and compliance.
It is profoundly important to remember Mary Turner because her story exposes the deep, systemic brutality of racial and gendered violence in American history—and reminds us why justice, remembrance, and truth-telling are sacred responsibilities.
Here are several reasons why her memory must never be erased:
1. She was lynched for speaking up.
Mary Turner, a 21-year-old pregnant Black woman, was lynched in Georgia in 1918 for publicly objecting to the lynching of her husband, Hayes Turner. She dared to grieve, speak out, and demand justice—and the mob silenced her with extraordinary cruelty. Remembering her is a refusal to let that silencing stand.
2. She represents the intersection of racial and gendered violence.
Mary Turner’s murder was not just racial terror—it was a brutal act of misogynoir, targeting her specifically as a Black woman. The violence inflicted on her body, including the killing of her unborn child, was meant to terrorize Black communities and especially to silence Black women.
3. Her story is a truth that challenges sanitized history.
Many Americans are taught a version of history that minimizes the brutality of lynching or omits the suffering of women and children. Mary Turner’s story demands that we face the truth—not to dwell in pain, but to ensure that no such horrors are ever repeated or forgotten.
4. Her memory stands as a warning and a call to action.
For generations, lynchings were carried out with impunity, often with community approval. Remembering Mary Turner pushes us to ask: What systems, policies, and laws today still allow for Black women to be silenced, violated, or ignored? It calls us to dismantle those systems and protect the dignity of every human being.
5. Honoring her is part of collective healing.
Naming Mary Turner, telling her story, and acknowledging her suffering affirms the value of her life. For descendants, for communities, and for truth-tellers, it is a way to resist historical erasure and begin to heal from wounds that remain open.
6. She reminds us that courage costs—but it also lives on.
Mary Turner was courageous. Even in grief, even in danger, she chose to speak. That is a legacy of strength. We honor her not only for what was done to her, but for who she was—a young woman, a wife, a mother, a voice.
May we say her name. May we teach her story.
And may we commit to building a world where no one suffers such injustice again.
