Great-grandson of lynching victim faces the past: “This is American history”
Lent Shaw was accused of harassing a white woman and lynched when he was 42. The chilling, gruesome image of what happened to him has haunted Shaw’s great-grandson, Evan Lewis, nearly his entire…
Hidden Civil Rights figure Samuel Bacon honored 70 years later
The L.A. Sentinel spoke with Kaylie Simon of CRRJ: “The second part of the project, is to ask the relatives of the people who were killed, ‘what would you like to see happen today?’ ‘What would justice look like to you today?’ Sometimes no legal remedies are available, but our philosophy is the family still deserves acknowledgement, recognition, and repair for what happened.”
Confronting the past: A young man tries to understand the lynching of his great-grandfather
Shondiin Silversmith conducted research for this story with CRRJ as part of her master’s degree program at Northeastern University.
Nearly 8 decades later, an apology for a lynching in Georgia
The fatal cruelties inflicted upon Austin Callaway were acknowledged in this city of 31,000 people when LaGrange’s police chief, Louis M. Dekmar, who is white, issued a rare apology for a Southern lynching.
Recent graduate shines investigative light on 75 year old Civil Rights cold case
Who killed Pvt. Felix Hall? Now, thanks to the work of Alexa Mills, this 75-year-old cold case—America’s first known lynching on a U.S. military base—is finally getting the attention that it deserved some three-quarters of a century ago.
Professor Margaret Burnham on the Walter Scott Case
Dr. Margaret Burnham was interviewed on Al Jazeera English
VT law student investigates racial killings
Baxter Bell’s case is among thousands of similar racially motivated slayings in the South in the mid-20th century that have largely been lost to history — but which continue to reverberate across the…
Truth and reconciliation is coming to America from the grassroots
All over the US, we are witnessing the dawn of a truth and reconciliation movement. There is a rising chorus of voices that is helping us to collectively face an epidemic of racial…
BYU Radio: Racial Killings, Selma
In the coming week, Americans will commemorate the assassination for Martin Luther King Junior. His is the most well-known death of the Civil Rights era. Emmett Till and Medgar Evers are oft-mentioned, too.…
Alabama’s Jim Crow era murders under new spotlight
A number of grisly racially-motivated killings that occurred in Alabama during the Jim Crow era are getting a fresh look. CRRJ is examining the cases as part of a nationwide investigation into the…
The Goal: To Remember Each Jim Crow Killing, From The ’30s On
The state of race relations in the United States has captivated the country for months. But a group of Northeastern University law students is looking to the past to a sometimes forgotten, violent…
George Stinney: CRRJ File Amicus Brief, Leads to Youngest American Executed Exonerated
George Stinney was executed in 1944. CRRJ filed the amicus brief that eventually led to the courts vacating Stinney’s conviction, 70 years later.
When Cold Cases Stay Cold
Several years ago, the FBI began reopening cold cases from that era — 112 at last count — raising hopes among some for justice. In all but about 20, though, the families of…