Samuel Nelson Soil Collection Ceremony

The Palm Beach Community Remembrance Project in collaboration with the Palm Beach County and the City of Delray beach invite you to participate in:

Soil Collection Ceremony for Mr. Samuel Nelson

who was lynched on September 26, 1926

Date:   June 18th, 2022

Time:  10:30 AM (part of a larger Juneteenth event at the site)

Place:  Pompey Park Gymnasium

              1101 NW 2nd Street

              Delray Beach FL, 33444

The ceremony will remember Samuel Nelson who was lynched on September 26, 1926. He was held in the Delray jail on a charge of attempted assault of a white woman in Miami. The next morning, the steel door of his cell was found battered open and Samuel Nelson’s body was found riddled with bullets on a canal bank west of Delray Beach. No one was held accountable for his murder.

The soil that was collected near the site of the lynching will be put into glass jars and on display at the Equal Justice Initiative’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice, the Spady Cultural Heritage Museum and other sites around Palm Beach County.

To learn more about Samuel Nelson and the Palm Beach County Community Remembrance Project, visit pbcremembrance.org.

“In this soil, there is the sweat of the enslaved. In the soil there is the blood of victims of racial violence and lynching. There are tears in the soil from all those who labored under the indignation and humiliation of segregation. But in the soil there is also the opportunity for new life, a chance to grow something hopeful and healing for the future.”

– Quote from Bryan Stevenson, Equal Justice Initiative, Executive Director

Please join us at the Samuel Nelson Soil Collection Event!