Virgil Ware, a 13-year-old boy, was killed on this site, on September 15, 1963, while riding on the handlebars of his 16-year-old brother’s bicycle, near his family‘s home. While riding by on a motorbike with Michael Lee Farley, 16-year old Larry Joe Sims, shot at the Ware brothers, shooting Virgil twice. Sims and Farley had just attended a segregationist rally. Farley and Sims were charged with first-degree murder, but an all-white jury convicted them on the lesser charge of second-degree manslaughter. Judge Wallace Gibson suspended the boys’ sentences and gave them two years probation. In 1997, Michael Lee Farley called the Ware Family to apologize. Sims called in 2003. Ware was murdered six hours after the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed. In 2004, a sign with Virgil Ware’s name on it was erected on the street where Virgil Ware grew up, and where the Ware Family still lives.
Reviewer Jason Houston of Orion Magazine reviewed Jessica Ingram’s project, “A Civil Rights Memorial”, for PDN. The archived article is available to PDNonline subscribers.