Willie Flowers, president of the NAACP Maryland State Conference, questioned the authenticity of Hogan's posthumous pardons of lynching victims, including for many who were never convicted of crimes and were just charged or alleged to have committed crimes. Every system that has been broken, as the governor of Maryland, he alone can change all of it." Some have suggested the term-limited Maryland governor could emerge as a GOP leader on the political stage for national office. "The Office of Legal Counsel reviewed the available documentation, including the information submitted by the Maryland Lynching Memorial Project," Ricci wrote in an email Sunday. According to research by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), many lynching victims were "murdered without being accused of any crime; they were killed for minor social transgressions or for demanding basic rights and fair treatment."

Source: CNN May 10, 2021 00:56 UTC