Walnut Street Bridge

The Walnut Street Bridge opened in 1890 and runs 2,376 feet across the Tennessee River between downtown Chattanooga and the north shore. It closed to cars in 1978, reopened as a pedestrian bridge in 1993 and is on the National Register of Historic Places. It is also where two Black men were lynched. Alfred Blount was hanged from it in 1893 on an accusation of attacking a white woman.

On March 19, 1906, Ed Johnson, a Black man in his early twenties, was lynched here. He was convicted in a rushed trial of raping a white woman, Nevada Taylor. She would not swear he was her attacker, and thirteen witnesses placed him at the saloon where he worked. Two Black lawyers, Noah Parden and Styles Hutchins, took his case to Washington, and Justice John Marshall Harlan stayed the execution. That night Sheriff Joseph Shipp gave his deputies the night off, and a mob took Johnson from the jail, hanged him from the bridge and shot him. The Supreme Court then tried Shipp and others for contempt, the only criminal trial it has ever held, and in 1909 found Shipp and five others guilty. Parden and Hutchins left Chattanooga for Oklahoma after threats. A judge vacated Johnson's conviction in 2000.

The Ed Johnson Memorial was unveiled near the bridge on September 19, 2021. The Bessie Smith Cultural Center, about a mile away, includes his story in its exhibits.