Remembering the Dead

[akirlu]

Among his various academic duties, my boss is working on a research project; the project entails comparing old census data with the scant personal information on victims of lynching in the South. The idea is to try to find out who these people were, confirm identities, and put a name and a history to each victim. His research assistants have put together a memorial project, based on the research so far. As part of UW's recognition of Black History Month, they've arranged a public reading of all the names. For each victim, we'll read the name, what is known of the circumstances of the lynching, along with their date of death. A bunch of us will take 20 minute watches reading out the list. I'll be there, on the lawn in front of the HUB, at 3:30 tomorrow. But the readings will go from 9:30 in the morning to 5:30 at night, on the HUB lawn. I have no idea if we'll get through all the names.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

What a great idea!

No healing without remembrance

[u-must-b-joking.livejournal.com]

Thank you for participating... it's important work.

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

Where is this going to be published?

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

No idea. Presumably one of the more statistics-and-demography-oriented sociology journals. Unless it turns out to be a book-length project. The project data are still being gathered and collated, and I don't think Stew is likely to have time to finish the data collection until next year, when he stops being department chair and gets a year's sabbatical. If you're interested in Stew's related work, he has a previous book out on the subject: Festival of Violence. Disclaimer: I haven't read it.

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

It's in Google Books. It looks well-written, but I'd want to go through it slowly.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

So, as it turns out the main thrust of this part of the project is to compile a database of lynching victims. The database, when completed, will be made available for the the use of researchers, both public and private, museums of history, especially of African American history, community groups and people seeking to document family history, and so forth. It's meant to be a research tool for others to have access to.

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

I think the readings are a really good idea and those of us in other states need to do it too. "There can be no reconciliation without remembrance."

[richardthe23rd.livejournal.com]

It does not get simpler, more succinct, nor more powerful than the writing in this paragraph.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I am not totally clear on this, but I believe the research isn't restricted to the South, it's the events that mostly are. I believe the scope of the research is to document all lynch victims in the US, up through the 1960's. Even within the South, though, there definitely were white lynch victims, as well as black, women as well as men. (The saddest case I heard of, though did not personally read out, was of an entire family that were lynched together -- father, mother, sons, daughter, and baby.) Finding out all the circumstances is unlikely to ever happen though. Even for the 15 minute stint I was reading (1909-1911 as it worked out) there were several victims where the name, and sometimes even gender and race, are lost to history. There's only so much connecting events to census data can do.