In the Spring of 2023, an undergraduate research team at James Madison University conducted a project to compile a census of all the historical markers that have been erected to memorialize lynching victims in the United States. Gianluca De Fazio, Associate Professor in the Justice Studies department, led the research team, composed by four Senior Justice Studies students (Evan Ambrose, Raeann Crowley, Rhiannon Dalton and Lexington Huntley) enrolled in JUST400 – Lynching and Racial Violence. Using the online Historical Markers Database (HMDB), the Equal Justice Initiative website and digital newspapers repositories, students identified and catalogued 149 lynching markers. For each marker, students collected a large amount of information, including the names(s) and number of lynching victims memorialized, the text of the marker, its location, the year in which it was erected, the organization responsible for the marker. The research team also collected pictures of each catalogued historical marker. Since this initial effort, Dr. De Fazio has been constantly updating the database, as new signs get approved, installed and unveiled. Each marker has an individual webpage that contains a picture and key information about the sign; individual markers can be browsed starting here, or can be searched by decade or state here. Kevin Hegg, the Head of Digital Projects at JMU Libraries, designed and implemented the features of this digital project, including the data visualization tools.
What is a historical marker? Which ones are included in this project?
A historical marker is a physical sign or plaque installed in a public place to commemorate and provide information about a historically significant event, person, structure, or site. The purpose of historical markers is to inform the public about the significance of the place and its connection to historical events. Historical markers typically include a short text that provides context and details about the historical significance of the subject, including dates, names, and other relevant information. While in the past state authorities were the sole producers of historical markers, today state, local and private organizations can all erect markers. In this project, we include signs from both statewide markers programs and local and private organizations, like the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). In fact, a large number of the markers in our database have been installed by the EJI and other local community remembrance projects to challenge the resistance by many state markers programs to commemorate lynching victims and, more generally, African American history. The vast majority of lynching markers have in fact been installed fairly recently, as part of a larger movement to acknowledge and confront the impact of racial terror in US History.
For the purposes of this project, we decided to include all the markers that explicitly commemorate lynching victims, or at least mention the lynching of a person in their inscriptions. We also added markers related to victims of racial terror killings (for instance, see this and this), even though they are not explicitly mentioned as lynching in the markers’ texts. While the vast majority of lynching markers relate to killings in the Jim Crow South, we have included also signs connected with lynchings in the West (see here for example) and other time periods. At least for now, we have decided not to include markers commemorating race riots, or other episodes of mass racial violence. While we have worked very hard to identify all the lynching markers we could find, it is very likely that we missed some – there are more than 200,000 historical markers in the United States, after all! If you know of a lynching marker that is not part of our database, please contact us (defazigx@jmu.edu), we’ll be happy to add it to our dataset.
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This project was made possible in part thanks to a CAL Legacy Award, funded by JMU’s College of Arts and Letters Alumni Board.