By Richard L. Gaw
Staff Writer

“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”                                                                                                          Maya Angelou

Much in the same way a long wound finally healed still leaves traces of its memory, a well- deserved display of honor and dignity was recently bestowed upon a Coatesville man 114 years after his death.

On Aug. 13, before more than 200 citizens, parishioners, elected officials and clergy of many denominations, the remains of Zachariah Walker, who was brutally lynched and burned to death in 1911 in Coatesville, was buried in a ceremony held at the Church of Christ Cemetery near Coatesville.

With the above quote by Maya Angelou serving as its spiritual guidepost, the event served as the 2025 Annual Senator Andrew Dinniman Community Gathering, and was sponsored by Dinniman, the Together Endowment, the Coatesville Area NAACP and the Coatesville Area Ministerium.

“It is a service of the people of this county to right a wrong that occurred 114 years ago and a real desire to bring these people together so that we can heal the divisiveness and the misunderstandings that exist in our society today,” Dinniman said before the ceremony. “As we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the struggle in America has been ‘How do you make the aspirational values expressed in the Declaration a reality for all Americans? This is, in my view, probably the first such event of the 250th anniversary celebration. It’s an event that doesn’t focus on historic tourism or the reenactment of a battle, but in bringing together and uniting them so that we can make those aspirations and values a reality.”

During his introductory remarks, Dinniman noted the diversity of those in attendance, both as speakers and audience members.

“We as a community, Black and white, Jewish, Islam, Christian and Hindu have come together as one people, because ultimately we are all the children of God, are we not?” he said.  “We come here to this cemetery – a Quaker meeting house that had been used as a stop on the Underground Railroad – we come to one of the centers of Black history of this county – we come as one and we will be praying as one.”

Walker’s eulogy was delivered by Pastor and State Rep. Dan Williams. 

“There was a fraudulent theology that supported the use of the Bible as the basis for slavery and hatred and that people of color are somehow less human,” he said. “There was a sociology that was perpetuated in our schools that taught that we were different and not worthy simply on the basis that we were not white.”

Saying that churches were culpable for their silence, Williams said that while religious leaders were committed to making sure people will not burn in Hell, “they were not addressing the fact that Black people were burning at crosses all through this township.”

“Mr. Walker’s death was a public spectacle, not a private event,” he said.

Additional speakers included Pastors Bobby Duncan and Scott Feather.

After the urn containing Walker’s remains was carried to his gravesite near the ceremony, his great niece Shanda Walker Taylor-Boyd placed the urn at the foot of Walker’s tombstone, which read in part, “You suffered the flames of hatred. Now rest in God’s eternal love.”

“A legacy of love, not a legacy of lynching, hate, hatred or resentment, but forgiveness,” Taylor-Boyd said. “We are moving forward, and we want everyone to be a part of it.”

Following the ceremony, members of the Coatesville Area NAACP, the Ministerium and the Together Endowment presented flowers at Rice’s gravesite. The contingent also visited the site of Walker’s lynching for a moment of silence and then proceeded to the Gateway Church in Parkesburg for lunch and a forum on overcoming hatred and violence.

A “conspiracy of silence”

According to a document written by Dr. Dennis Downey, Professor Emeritus at Millersville University, and Dr. Charles Hardy III, Professor Emeritus at West Chester University, Walker had come to Coatesville to work in the Worth Brothers Steel Mill. On the evening of Aug. 12, 1911, Walker got involved in a scuffle with Edgar Rice, a steel company security guard and former policeman. When Rice tried to arrest Walker for public drunkenness, Walker allegedly shot Rice in self-defense. 

Rice stumbled to a nearby storefront, where he died of his injuries. Within an hour, a local posse formed and set out to apprehend Walker, who had vanished into the countryside south of
Coatesville, where he was found the next morning hiding in an orchard. While there are disputes whether Walker attempted to take his own life or shot by a member of the mob, he fell from a tree and suffered severe head wounds. 

After being transported to the Coatesville Hospital and treated for head wounds and a broken jaw while shackled to his bed, a crowd estimated at 2,000 later marched on the hospital and seized Walker, carrying him on the bed from the hospital to Strode Avenue and preparing a large bonfire. Walker was thrown into the fire three times but managed to escape. On the mob’s last attempt, they cut Walker’s foot off and tied a rope around him and held him in the inferno until he died. 

“Don’t give me no crooked death because I’m not white,” Walker told the mob.

As he was burnt to death, a crowd estimated at several thousand looked on and some in the crowd collected his bones as souvenirs. Later that year, Coatesville Police Chief Charles Umsted was indicted for involuntary manslaughter for his failure to the stop the lynching.

While the 1911 lynching was widely condemned, it spawned what Downey and Hardy called “a conspiracy of silence” in Coatesville. Lynchings were often underreported, and attempted lynchings, including two later incidents in Coatesville, often have been ignored in the history of racial violence. In 1938, as rumors circulated of a possible lynching, local Blacks organized themselves into an armed militia to prevent further violence. 

Shortly after forming in 1909, the national NAACP took on the Walker murder, which became one of the first lynching cases the association became actively involved with. The NAACP’s actions led to the passage of the Pennsylvania Anti-Lynching law in 1923. 

To learn more about the lynching of Zachariah Walker, visit the NAACP Coatesville Area Branch’s website at www.chesconaacp.org.

To contact Staff Writer Richard L. Gaw, email [email protected].