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