Some of the oldest true crime cases in America are racial terror lynchings. To understand the history of lynching in the American South you have to know what led to the acceptance of racial terror and the brave people who led anti lynching campaigns in an effort to end the violence and save lives. 

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Episode Sources

Hanging Bridge: Racial Violence and America's Civil Rights Century by Jason Morgan Ward. Oxford University Press

The Cross and the Lynching Tree (James Hal Cone and Bill Moyers). The Journal. 

Emmett Till Antilynching Act. Public Law No: 117-107 (03/29/2022). This bill makes lynching a federal hate crime offense.

This Bridge in Mississippi Has Hosted Decades of Racial Violence. Vice. April 27, 2016

What happens when we forget? Facing South. May 7, 2018

Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States 1889-1918. NAACP Report on Lynching 

Equal Justice Initiative, Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror (3d Ed., 2017).

How one Civil Rights activist posed as a white man in order to investigate lynchings. Fresh Air, NPR. March 30, 2022

Episode Music

“One” courtesy of Ross Gentry. Special thanks to Headway Recordings, in Asheville, North Carolina.