Keeping the Red Record - A Digital ArchiveThe digital archive seeks to preserve historical records of race-related political violence to facilitate research, teaching, and remedial efforts. The project follows in a long line of efforts to maintain what Ida B. Wells called A Red Record, referring to the "national crime of lynching." Given apparent legacies of lynching in relevant areas and remedial efforts underway, the Racial Violence Archive was created to update and augment this record through ongoing collection of racial violence event data, facilitating research, advocacy and remedy.
Data Sources and Focus The project database is comprised of event records drawn from several kinds of sources, including: existing databases; published compilations; government reports; and, archival materials (e.g., NAACP and other organizational records). The collection is being developed gradually through general research and focused attention to specific states. States which have been studied most closely to date are Mississippi, North Carolina, and Louisiana. The collection is currently focused on racial violence targeting black Americans between 1870 and 1970. The database presently contains over 5,000 events of race-related political violence, the majority being lynchings, but collection efforts are focused on racial violence since the decline of lynching, including bombings and violent assaults in the 1950s and 60s. |
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