People attending an Easter service, led by the Rev. Larry Maddox (back right) of New Growth Ministries, walk around Park Central Square to show racial harmony on Sunday morning.

Steve J.P. Liang / News-Leader

The Rev. Larry Maddox presides at Sunday's service, which was held in memory of three black men who were hanged and then burned at Park Central Square in 1906. He said there are still social issues that need to be addressed.

By Ryan Slight
News-Leader staff

Undeterred by a frigid wind, a multiracial crowd contentedly clapped to a Sunday gospel song punctuated with the Rev. Larry Maddox's tambourine.

The black and white hands of a few dozen Springfield residents later clasped together to pray during an early Easter service on Park Central Square before attendees went to their regular church services.

Mark Dixon recalled that Springfield residents also left the square for church on Easter 1906 — shortly after watching a mob hang and burn three innocent black men.

Pastors compared the killings of the men, who were seized from the Greene County Jail and publicly lynched, to that of Jesus Christ, who was also led to his death by a mob