Seventy-six years ago, a black teenager was taken from a Lagrange, Georgia jail and shot. Now, the police chief of that department is issuing an apology.
Police Chief Lou Dekmar made a statement on Thursday at the Warren Temple United Methodist Church and said that the department’s lack of protection led to 16-year-old Austin Callaway’s death.
“I sincerely regret and denounce the role our Police Department played in Austin’s lynching, both through our action and our inaction,” Dekmar said. “And for that, I’m profoundly sorry. It should never have happened.”
“An acknowledgment and apology is necessary to aid in healing wounds of past brutalities and injustice,” he added.
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Dekmar only recently learned about Callaway’s story and was shocked to hear how, in 1940, a group of masked men stormed the jail where Callaway was being held on charges of attacking a white woman. The men held the lone police officer on duty at gunpoint and ordered him to open Callaway’s cell before they took the boy away and shot him.
Officers never attempted to investigate or track down Callaway’s killers, and at the time, a grand jury simply told the jail to “get better locks for the jail.”
Callaway’s second cousin, Glenn Dowell, called the apology a step in the right direction.
“Here comes Lagrange, Georgia, which has previously been kind of an oligarchy, ruled by an oligarchy in the community, changing. It has changed for the best,” Dowell said.
