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America's Original Sin

We recommend America's Original Sin by Jim Wallis and its study guide as important resources, especially for group study and discussion groups. Jim Wallis has been respected as a religious leader across the nation since the 1960s. He identifies as a white evangelical Christian but he has won the respect of Roman Catholics and Liberal Protestants as well as leaders from the Islamic and Jewish communities. Published in 2016 the book includes updated reflections on events in Ferguson, Missouri and Charleston, South Carolina.

The Horror of Lynchings Lives On

The time when African-Americans were publicly hanged, burned and dismembered for insisting on their rights or for merely talking back to whites is nearer in history than many Americans understand.

History: Ida B. Wells

Ida B. Wells-Barnett was a fearless anti-lynching crusader, suffragist, women's rights advocate, journalist, and speaker. She stands as one of our nation's most uncompromising leaders and most ardent defenders of democracy.

Interview with Charlie Morris, brother of Jesse Lee Bond

The Lynching Sites Project of Memphis interviews 95-year old Charlie Morris whose brother, Jesse Lee Bond was lynched in Arlington, Tennessee in 1939.

100 years after lynching, Abbeville honors Anthony Crawford

ABBEVILLE -- As chants of “we are here” rose from the front lawn of the Abbeville Opera House on Saturday morning, the tragic end to a prominent black man’s life was recast by civil rights leaders as a lesson in the power of conscience.

The Tragic, Forgotten History of Black Military Veterans

The susceptibility of black ex-soldiers to extrajudicial murder and assault has long been recognized by historians, but the topic has never received such comprehensive standalone treatment. In the aftermath of Trump’s victory, it seems eerily relevant.

Confronting a Southern White Past

"Two southern natives, Edward Ball and Karen Branan, discovered dark truths about their ancestors that became the substance of powerful books."

Lynching in America: Targeting Black Veterans

The end of the Civil War marked a new era of racial terror and violence directed at black people in the United States that has not been adequately acknowledged or addressed in this country. Following emancipation in 1865, thousands of freed black men, women, and children were killed by white mobs, former slave owners, and members of the Confederacy who were unwilling to accept the anticipated end of slavery and racial subordination.

Keep 'Tent City' story in history classes

Two African-American men drive the final stakes into the ground after putting up a new tent at Tent City, which was built for evicted tenant farmers in Fayette County, Tenn., on Dec. 30, 1960. African Americans taking up residence in the tents claim the evictions were ordered in retaliation against those who registered to vote. (Photo: Associated Press file photo)

Nearly six decades ago they were evicted from their homes for merely trying to register to vote. Now they are in danger of being evicted from Tennessee's public schools.

A history of lynching in 5 minutes

The Equal Justice Institute has released a powerful video that unflinchingly explores the racial terror of America.

Can the South Make Room for Reconstruction?

The National Park Service wants to tell a more complete story of the Civil War, but some cities are more receptive to that effort than others.

EJI's Lynching Marker Project Grows

"EJI believes that truthfully acknowledging this history is vital to healing and reconciliation. As part of its effort to help towns, cities, and states confront and recover from tragic histories of racial violence and terrorism, EJI is joining with communities to install historical markers at the sites of lynchings..."

A lynching kept out of sight (Felix Hall, Georgia)

...In 2014, Northeastern University Law School’s Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, which seeks to uncover details of racially motivated murders during the Jim Crow era, began digging up documents on Hall’s case. Those documents were turned over to Northeastern’s School of Journalism, prompting a year-long investigation into the lynching and the government’s failure to see justice done.

Putting Lynching on the Map

On a Sunday afternoon in May, more than 100 people gathered on a grassy knoll sandwiched between a swamp and a construction company lot on the eastern outskirts of Memphis, Tennessee. Two high school juniors, Khamilla Johnson and Khari Bowman, stood before them and described how, exactly 99 years ago, a crowd at least 50 times as large had come to this very spot to watch the lynching of a black man named Ell Persons.

1917 Lynching Recalled, Marker Planned at Site

In a year, a group of religious leaders hopes to draw at least 5,000 Memphians to an area off Summer Avenue by the Wolf River where 3,000 gathered nearly a century ago as a man was burned alive.

The Lynching Sites Project of Memphis gathered Sunday, May 22, in a field by a Wolf River oxbow, 99 years to the day that Ell Persons was lynched at an event that was covered by local newspapers in advance.

Burned Alive: The Lynch Murder, Mutilation and Mayhem of Ell Persons

On Tuesday, April 12 [2016] the American Inns of Court in Memphis, Tennessee invited me and other members of the Lynching Sites Project to come and share the story of the lynching of Ell Persons. Attorney Carla Peacher-Ryan and Dr. Tom Carlson promoted the work we do in the recovering of lynching sites in Shelby County, while Dr. Margaret Vandiver discussed the broader implications of the Persons lynching. I had the task of giving a speech detailing Persons lynching and the aftermath.

Memphis Burning

Clipping from a 1917 newspaper article about Persons’ lynching (photo by Andrea Morales)

Last winter, with a scrawled list of the streets and landmarks mentioned in 100-year-old newspaper articles, I drove east through Memphis, past Shelby Farms, to what I believed might have been the place where a black woodchopper named Ell Persons was burned alive before thousands of spectators. I walked along the edge of the Wolf River, unsure whether this was the place. The river was narrower than I expected, and the bridge was newer than I thought it should have been.

In Memphis, A Movement To Mark Lynching Sites

As racial tensions continue to make headlines around the country, one group in Memphis has banded together to take action. Sharon Pavelda, a founding member of Responding to Racism, joins Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson to explain the group’s push to mark the sites of lynchings that happened in the past – as a way to move forward.

Healing our history, healing ourselves

On May 22, 1917, at the Old Wolf River bridge, a black man was doused with gasoline and thrown alive into a bonfire. Five thousand people watched. The crowd was unusually large because of an announcement of the place and time in the Memphis press and the fact that a number of county schools had been let out early so students could attend.

Memphis group joins effort to identify, memorialize all lynching sites in the South

A local church-based group is working to locate and memorialize the site of every post-Civil War lynching in Shelby County.

The group, which is calling itself "Responding to Racism," is led by three retirees, all white and all members of First Congregational Church.

Rev. Randall Mullins, a retired United Church of Christ minister, sent an email to more than a dozen local clergy on Friday asking them to join the effort and recruit others.