A monument will be dedicated Saturday as part of a memorial service to Johnnie Cornish, one of three African American men burned alive in Kirvin in 1922 after being accused in the murder of a white girl.

The murders were the subject of a book, "Flames After Midnight: Murder, Vengeance and the Desolation of a Texas Community," written by former Fairfield resident Monte Akers and published in 1999.

The monument is to be dedicated at 11 a.m. at Fairfield Cemetery by members of the Cornish family.

"This is about remembering and healing," Betty Cochran of Gilbert, Ariz., second cousin of Cornish and organizer of the cere- mony, says.

"What happened 87 years ago was unbelievably horrible. It was well-publicized then, but later swept under a rug. We need to look at events like what happened to my cousin squarely in the eye, deal with them, forgive those who did wrong and make certain these sorts of things never happen again," she says.

Cornish, 20, Mose Jones and Snap Curry, all African Americans, were arrested and jailed in the murder of 17-year-old Eula Ausley on May 16, 1922.

The three men were taken from jail in Fairfield after midnight and carried in cars to Kirvin where they were mutilated, secured to a plow and burned alive by a large crowd of citizens.

The incident set off a reign of terror lasting nearly a month, causing the death of numerous other African Americans in the area, after which the town of Kirvin, which was a boom town of nearly 2,000 residents before the inci- dent, nearly ceased to exist.

"Johnnie was just a young man," Mary Helen Malone of Fort Worth, great niece of Cornish, says. "He was with a white doctor from Fairfield when the murder occurred, but people insisted he was involved, and killed him in the most awful way imaginable. He's never had a headstone or monument of any kind, and this is the least we can do for him."

Inscription on the monument is a quote from Archbishop Desmond Tutu who, in commenting in 1998 about apartheid in South Africa, said: "Without memory there is no healing. Without forgiveness, there is no future."

The reign of terror following the murders of Cornish, Curry and Jones ended in June 1922, but only after another African American, Floyd Gibson, a veteran of World War I, took a rifle from the hands of his nephew, who had just been killed by a white mob, lay down and began shooting, killing two members of the mob.

"This story is amazingly dramatic," Akers says. "When I started researching in in 1986, I thought it was only a racial lynching story, but the identity of the real murderers and other information that came out before and since the book was published was star- tling."

Members of the family of Miss Ausley have been invited to the dedication, and anyone else interested in opening a dialogue, making friendships and creating bonds is invited to attend, organizers point out.

The ceremony will include a keynote speech by Akers.