In an emotional ceremony, the mayor and the police chief of a city in the US state of Georgia have apologised for the lynching of a black man more than 75 years ago.
LaGrange police chief Lou Dekmar said the killing of Austin Callaway, who was taken from the city jail by a band of armed white men in 1940, should never have happened.
Callaway was 18 when he was led from his cell, shot and left to die along a road on September 7, 1940.
He had been arrested that day, accused of assaulting a white woman.
Dekmar told a gathering including Callaway's relatives inside a Methodist church in LaGrange that police that day had failed to protect Callaway in custody and failed afterward to investigate the killing.
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"I sincerely regret and denounce the role our police department played in Austin's lynching - both through our action and inaction. For that I am profoundly sorry," Dekmar added.
LaGrange Mayor Jim Thornton also spoke at the service.
"Let me say this emphatically: justice failed Austin Callaway in 1940," Thornton said, addng no one was ever held accountable. "Until we have a full, complete acknowledgement of the past, we can never fully heal."
Deborah Tatum, whose grandfather was a cousin of Calloway's grandfather, was among family members present.
"It's exciting to know that he finally has a voice," she said.
