Murder History

Uncovering race-based murders from 1930 to 1955.

I never understood the appeal of murder mysteries. Whether fiction or nonfiction, I don’t consider murder to be entertainment. But this post is about a different kind of murder mystery.

The murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955 was publicized nationally and is generally well-known. But how many racially-motivated murders have gone unrecorded or unremembered?

Who were these people?

What were the circumstances of their murders?

What became of the murderers?

Flag, announcing lynching, flown from the window of the NAACP headquarters on 69 Fifth Ave., New York City. Source: Library of Congress

In my research for a previous post on Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., I ran across this 2022 interview on NPR. Margaret Burnham is a professor at the Northeastern University School of Law. In the interview, she discusses her work with the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project (CRRJ). Burnham and Melissa Nobles (then a professor of political science, now Chancellor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) have been collecting data and documents on anti-Black racial violence in eleven states of the former Confederacy between the years 1930 and 1955. Since 2009, over 400 students have worked on the project.

The data and documents have been deposited in the Burnham-Nobles Archive. This searchable digital archive contains over 12,000 documents related to the murders of almost 1,000 individuals. The documents include photographs, newspaper articles, death certificates, police records, reports, letters, and more. The archive can be searched using parameters ranging from year and location to the involvement of hate groups or whether the perpetrator was arrested, charged, or convicted.

Today, February 4, is the anniversary of the birth of Rosa Parks. It is also Transit Equity Day.

As I read through some of the entries, it has became even more clear to me how brave it was for anyone to defy Jim Crow seating on public transit. In the CRRJ Digital Archive, I read about Samuel Bacon, Willie Crook, Timothy Hood, and Booker Spicely. These men were murdered because they protested against segregated seating or refused to move.

After a lifetime of suffering the indignities of Jim Crow seating, Rosa Parks made the brave decision to resist. I’m sure she knew what the consequences could be.

“People always say that I didn’t give up my seat because I was tired, but that isn’t true. I was not tired physically, or no more tired than I usually was at the end of a working day. I was not old… No, the only thing I was tired of, was tired of giving in.” —Rosa Parks

Another thing that is striking to me about the Archive is that more than 100 of the murder victims listed there were veterans, like Timothy Hood. Thirty victims were active duty military. Booker Spicely was killed while in uniform.

Private Booker Spicely in an undated US Army photo.

More than a million Black Americans served in the military during World War II. These patriots risked their lives for their country, yet on American soil, they were treated as second class citizens and murdered because of their race.

African American marines in tank turret during World War II. Library of Congress

“America cannot hope to lead the peoples of the world to freedom, justice and equality without achieving for all of its own citizens a full measure of these virtues. Hence the fate of the minority groups in America is bound with the fate of the peoples of the world; and the prevalence of human freedom and peace throughout the world will be conditioned by the extent to which democracy and freedom are enjoyed by all Americans, regardless of race, creed or color.”—Ella Baker

I am currently reading Burnham’s book, By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow’s Legal Executioners (W.W. Norton & Company 2022). The book describes some of these murders in depth and with historical context. It also points out the failure of the American legal system to bring the murderers to justice. It’s a tough read, and I can only read a bit at a time as I process the emotions it evokes in me.

The vitally important work of the CRRJ is bringing to light the state-sanctioned violence that was committed to enforce white supremacy and the damage it inflicted on individuals, families, and communities. As horrific as these stories are, there are likely many more that are lost forever to history.