February 12, 2025. Robert Clark was an African American that was lynched in Bristol in 1891, accused of assaulting a white woman. While Clark was previously thought to have been killed on the Tennessee side of Bristol, recent research by the Bristol Community Remembrance Project revealed that...
October 10, 2024. Dr. De Fazio has recently published an edited volume with University of Virginia Press titled "Lynching in Virginia: Racial Terror and Its Legacy" Although not as associated with lynching as other southern states, Virginia has a tragically extensive history with these horrific...
May 14, 2024. Recent research has confirmed that another black man, William Stokes, had been lynched in Dinwiddie county, in 1888. Stokes was accused of entering the home of a black farmer with the intention of raping his daughter; after his arrest, unknown men took Stokes from a prison-house and...
January 31, 2024. Dr. Gianluca De Fazio recently released a new digital project: Memorializing Racial Terror: Lynching Markers in the United States. This project catalogs and maps all the historical markers commemorating victims of lynching in the United States, thus documenting recent efforts by...
January 30, 2024. Archeologist and historian Kathy Liston examines the life and death of Joseph Holmes in her essay '‘Lynching a Legislator: The Joseph R. Holmes Story.‘ Born into slavery, Joe Holmes was elected at the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1867-1868, where he promoted radical...
October 17, 2023. In the past few months, the Racial Terror website underwent a thorough revision to update its content and expand the historical information we have about lynching in Virginia. In particular, all of the entries about each lynching victims have been edited and enriched with...
September 14, 2023. Beginning in 2021, James Madison University and the Library of Virginia started a collaboration to retrieve, digitize and transcribe more than 300 pages of primary source materials documenting lynching in the commonwealth from 1866-1932. The materials are now freely available...
In collaboration with JMU Libraries and the College of Education, we are releasing a set of lesson plans for K12 schools in Virginia that can be used to understand lynching in Virginia and its legacy. Social Science and English teachers are invited to peruse these resources to teach the hard...
Dr. De Fazio is the organizer of a virtual panel titled 'Researching, Remembering and Honoring Lynching Victims in Virginia' for the next African, African American & Diaspora Studies (AAAD) Conference at JMU. The panel will take place between 1:30 and 3:00PM on Friday, February 18th, 2022. The...