Our team compiles biographies and accounts of lynchings by utilizing primary source databases and published secondary sources on racial violence. Please check with your local public library or university library for access to these databases. Explore below to learn more about these resources.

Newspapers

African American Newspapers, Series 1, 1827-1998

Online access to 280 U.S. newspapers chronicling a century and a half of the African American experience. Subscription based.

African American Newspapers, Series 2, 1835-1956

Complements and expands on African American Newspapers, Series 1, 1827-1998. There are more than 75 newly available newspapers in Series 2. Subscription based.

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers

Online access to America’s historic newspaper pages from 1777-1963. This resource includes a Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present. Publicly available.

Newspapers.com

Online newspaper archive, established in 2012. Subscription based.

Tuskegee Institute News Clippings File

The Tuskegee Institute News Clippings File is a microfilm edition of hundreds of thousands of individual news clippings (1899–1966) compiled from more than 300 major national dailies, leading southeastern dailies, Afro-American newspapers, magazines, religious and special interest publications, and foreign newspapers. The collection represents an important resource for researching the 20th century Afro-American experience in the United States, Africa, and the world. 252 reels, 66-page guide. Check with your local library.

Genealogy Resource

Ancestry Library Edition

Genealogy collection from ancestry.com that includes census data, vital records, directories, and photos. Subscription based.

Data Table

Kentucky Lynchings

Lynchings that occurred in the state of Kentucky. Source: Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology, University of Washington. Created by Will Kantlehner IV. Publicly available.

Books

The foundational text for this project is George Wright’s Racial Violence in Kentucky, 1865 – 1940: Lynchings, Mob Rule, and “Legal Lynchings” (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990). Based on deep research of African American newspapers and archives, Wright’s book documents the victims of extralegal violence in Kentucky, as well as victims who were “lawfully lynched,” as in accused and tried in one day before being executed.

Additional titles

Amy Kate Bailey and Stewart E. Tolnay, Lynched: The Victims of Southern Mob Violence 
Philip Dray, At The Hand of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America 
Equal Justice Initiative, Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror 
Crystal N. Feimster, Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching 
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Thirty Years of Lynching, 1889-1918
Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Southern Horrors and Other Writings: The Anti-Lynching Campaign of Ida B. Wells, 1892-1900
Kidada Williams, They Left Great Marks On Me: African American Testimonies of Racial Violence from Emancipation to World War I

Visual Media

Cornell University, “Lynching: Selected Resources: Films”
Always in Season (dir. Jaqueline Olive, 2020)
Lynching Postcards: Token of a Great Day (dir. Christine Turner, 2021)
An Outrage: A Documentary Film About Lynching in the American South (dirs. Hannah Ayers and Lance Warren, 2017)
Without Sanctuary: Photographs and Postcards of Lynching in America (Curated by James Allen and John Littlefied, 2000)

Other

Research Guide – may be helpful for users research and writing racial violence in Kentucky.