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>> GIANLUCA: Hi, my name is Gianluca De Fazio, assistant professor in the Justice Studies
Department at James Madison University.
In the past two years I have led a research project called Racial Terror: Lynching in
Virginia, which encompasses the years from 1877 to 1927.
This digital project examines one of the darkest, yet almost forgotten, pages of American history:
the lynching of thousands of people in the US South between the end of Reconstruction
and the 1930s.
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While a small number of the victims of mob violence were white, lynching was essentially
a form of state-sanctioned terrorism against African Americans; in fact, very few lynchers
ever faced trial, and almost no-one was ever indicted for these crimes.
Lynching was a key institution in the preservation of white supremacy in the Jim Crow South.
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This project on lynching in Virginia started as a data collection effort, as well
as a pedagogical tool for undergraduate students.
In the Spring of 2017, I taught an Advanced Research course (JUST402), during which 6
senior JMU students collected and organized hundreds of articles from historical Virginia
newspapers, detailing all the known lynchings that occurred in the Commonwealth between
1877 and 1927.
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The website I compiled with the help of Kevin Hegg, Director of Digital Projects
at JMU, and my JUST402 undergraduate students, tells the stories of the 104 known lynching
victims who were killed in Virginia during the lynching era.
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Moreover, the Racial Terror website stores more than 500 historical newspaper
articles describing these barbaric acts of 'popular justice'.
These articles are now available for anyone to read; a map of Virginia is also provided
to display where each lynching occurred.
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Reading the stories of lynching victims improves understanding of their ongoing
significance for contemporary issues of racial oppression.
This digital project not only can be used as a pedagogical tool to spark in-class discussions
on racial violence, collective memory, diversity and inclusion, it can also serve as a way
to honor the memory of those who died without the benefit of due process in a land that
takes pride in being a nation of laws.
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