MEDIA ADVISORY
For Immediate Release: 19 February 2008 Contact Amy Bailey; 206-250-6731
Public Reading of Lynch Victims’ Names Will Memorialize Casualties of Racial Violence
Members of the University of Washington community will hold a public reading of the names of more than 3,000 known lynch victims as part of Black History Month observances. The event is scheduled to take place on Tuesday, February 26, on the lawn outside the HUB, beginning at 9:30 a.m. Event organizers estimate that the reading will last until after 7:00 p.m. More than 40 volunteers will take 15-minute shifts reading the name, race and gender of each victim, as well as the state, county and date of their lynching, and the justification given for their murder.
The memorial reading is being spearheaded by members of a research project that is using historical census records to create a database of lynch victims and their families. Professor Stewart E. Tolnay, chair of the Sociology Department, is a nationally-known expert on lynching and the principal investigator on this project. “We hope to raise awareness about lynching among the university community,” said Tolnay. “Our goal with this event is to provide a sense of the magnitude of this phenomenon in our nation’s history, and to help remember the individuals who lost their lives to racial violence.” Throughout the American South, one person was killed every week by mob violence between 1882 and 1930, for offenses ranging from rape and murder to foul language or treating whites disrespectfully. The vast majority of lynch victims were African American men.
Tolnay’s current research project includes both graduate students and undergraduates, and uses his prior work on lynching as a springboard. Specifically, the students are locating the census records of victims included in an inventory created in the late 1980s by Tolnay and E.M. Beck, a professor at the University of Georgia. The original inventory was compiled using a variety of historical documents, including lists of victims published by the Tuskegee Institute, the Chicago Tribune and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as newspaper accounts of lynching events. The names to be read on the 26th are drawn from this inventory, as well as from a list of Washington state victims compiled by former Evergreen State University professor Michael Pfeifer.
The Sociology Students’ Association (SSA), a club comprised mainly of undergraduate sociology majors, is also collaborating on the event. “Undergraduates need to step up and find a way to make history ‘real,” said SSA president Marianne Goldin. “As sociology students, we can do no better than giving voice to the people we study, seeing jargon become a real human life and ensuring that these painful legacies don’t get swept under the carpet.”
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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS ABOUT THE EVENT
1. What Is Planned for this Event?
We plan to hold a public reading of the names of roughly 3,000 people who were lynched in 10 southern states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee) between 1882 and 1930, as well as in the state of Washington. For each victim, we will read their name, the date and location of their lynching, as well as the crime or social infraction that was used as the excuse for perpetrating their murder. A team of volunteers will take turns, in 15-minute shifts, reading from our inventory of victims.
2. What Is the Purpose of this Event?
We are holding this event in conjunction with Black History Month observances at the University of Washington. Our goal is to increase awareness among members of the UW community about the lynching era, and to commemorate the loss of these thousands of people.
3. What Do You Mean by the Term “Lynching”?
We define a “lynching” as an extralegal killing, justified by honor or race pride. To be considered a lynching for our purposes, the violence must have been perpetrated by three or more individuals, and cannot be motivated by a personal conflict.
4. Where Did The Names for this Event Come From?
The names are from two sources. The first is an inventory of lynch victims created by Sociology Department Professor and Chair Stewart E. Tolnay, in collaboration with E.M. Beck at the University of Georgia. Their inventory was constructed using a combination of pre-existing lynching inventories produced by the NAACP, the Tuskegee Institute, and the Chicago Tribune, with information verified using historical Southern newspapers. More information on this initial project is available in the book A Festival of Violence. Our second source is an inventory created by former Evergreen State College professor Michael Pfeifer, as published in Rough Justice: Lynching and American Society, 1874 – 1947. The people whose deaths we will memorialize with this event represent only a fraction of those who have been victimized by lynchings in the United States.
5. What’s the Current Connection to the University of Washington?
Professor Tolnay currently has a new data collection effort underway, funded by the National Science Foundation (SES-0521339), and staffed by a combination of graduate and undergraduate students. We are creating a new database that includes detailed information on each of the victims listed in the original inventory of lynch victims, based on their records in the population census. This information expands what is currently known about each person – typically only their name, race, and gender. Using census records, we can include for each victim and all members of his/her household: their age, occupation, marital status, family structure, place of birth, literacy status and/or whether they are enrolled in school, whether they lived on a farm, and the birthplace of his/her parents. Additionally, for some decades, we can also learn whether their home was owned or being rented, the location of their employer (ex: a turpentine factory or a private household). Through this effort, we hope to re-introduce the individual victims into the study of lynching, allowing us to ask why, given that contextual circumstances were ripe for a hate crime of this type to have occurred, certain individuals were targeted.
6. Who Is Organizing This Event?
This event originated with project staff, and is being organized with substantial collaboration from the Sociology Students Association.