Historians estimate there were 4,084 racial terror lynchings in 12 Southern states between 1877 and 1950.
But those incidents have often gone unacknowledged.
Across the country, researchers are trying to restore the historical record, poring through newspaper archives and public records for evidence of overlooked lynchings of Black Americans. In the past few years, activists have successfully lobbied for markers acknowledging such killings in Mississippi in 1908 and Kentucky in 1894.
“There’s a reckoning going on across the country to say, ‘Let’s just tell the full story. Don’t just tell part of the history,’” said Russ Adcox, a pastor in Columbia, Tenn., who is lobbying for markers acknowledging the 14 lynchings that happened in his community. “Until you recognize history, you can’t really heal from it.”
But these efforts have often met resistance from local residents — both Black and White.
“The collective nature of lynching may make it especially difficult for communities to face,” said Margaret Vandiver, a retired professor of criminal justice who is researching lynchings in Tennessee. “The responsibility for what was done cannot plausibly be blamed on one or a few bad people but extends to the majority of the White community.”
Last year, a music video by country star Jason Aldean for his song “Try That in a Small Town,” which critics said contained coded threats against Black people, became part of a national conversation about the historical significance of lynching sites. The Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, where 18-year-old Henry Choate was lynched in 1927, served as a backdrop in the video.
Choate was accused of attacking a 16-year-old White girl, which he denied. Kidnapped from jail, he was lynched by a mob of about 350 White men at the courthouse.
Aldean said he wasn’t aware of the courthouse’s history and, “knowing what I know now,” would have changed the location of the video.
For years, local activists have wanted a marker to memorialize Choate in Maury County, where the gravestone of Ku Klux Klan grand wizard and Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest is located.
The Columbia Peace and Justice Initiative, a local advocacy group, plans to push for a marker, but for now is focusing on getting a statue of Thurgood Marshall, said Adcox, the pastor. The future Supreme Court justice was nearly lynched outside Columbia in 1946 after defending two Black men charged in a race riot. While leaving town, Marshall was pulled over by police and taken down a dirt road where several White men were waiting for him. He was saved when friends following in another car arrived.
There is a historical marker acknowledging the riot — in which White residents rampaged through a Black neighborhood but no White person was charged. However, there’s nothing for the numerous lynchings in the community, Adcox said.