Nelson Cooper was an African American man who lived in Greenville, Kentucky. Given the frequency of the name “Nelson Cooper” in the U.S. Census Records of 1860, 1870, and 1880, it was difficult to ascertain reliable, specific biographical information about him. Please check Ancestry Library for more information. Similarly, given the commonness of Sam Bailey’s […]
There is little extant biographical information about Edwin Traughber. Newspapers of the time gave conflicting accounts of Traughber’s residential information and work history. Traughber was an African American man, living and working as a farmhand in Logan County, near the Tennessee border. On the night of July 15, 1894 a group of masked men entered […]
George Scott was an African American man born between 1873 and 1879. In 1898, he worked as a farm hand for William Scroggins 2.5 miles east of Adairville, Kentucky (a small town in southern Kentucky, bordering Tennessee). There is little extent information about Scott. Accounts of his life and his work have been drawn from […]
Vanessa Sanchez, writing for the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism, states that newspapers in Kentucky with predominantly white readerships blamed the victims of lynchings by using racial stereotypes in their reporting. See Sanchez’s full reporting on the issue here. The materials within the collection provide insight into the lynchings of Virgil Jones, John Jones, […]
