On the eve of Juneteenth Tuesday, Ohio state Rep. Dontavius Jarrells, D-Columbus, announced plans for a resolution acknowledging the story of the Randolph Freedpeople. It’s a dark but largely forgotten incident in Ohio’s history, and Jarrells hopes his effort can be the first step toward restitution.

During the height of summer in 1846, a mob of white Mercer County residents surrounded a group of nearly 400 Freedpeople who’d just taken a boat up the Miami Canal to New Bremen. The former slaves had been traveling for more than a month, making a nearly 300-mile trek across Virginia and the Allegheny mountains on foot, before taking a boat to Cincinnati and following the canal north.