october 2024 Edition
Feature Article
Digging Into the Past Draws Up Lessons
Virginia and Virginians should discuss and come to terms with this Commonwealth’s centuries long history of racial violence - it is the only way we can invoke justice and create an inclusive community, according to Dr. Gianluca De Fazio, editor of the recently released book, Lynching in Virginia, Racial Terror and Its Legacy.
“For far too long, stories of lynching and their impact on Black families have been neglected and purged from both collective and institutional memories. History textbooks and curricula have typically overlooked lynchings as a tool of enforcing white supremacy,” states Dr. De Fazio, associate professor of Justice Studies at James Madison University.
The bound collection of eleven essays examines the role newspapers played in mob violence, delves into 26 lynchings that took place in Southwest Virginia, considers the Commonwealth’s response to lynchings and highlights attempts to restore community memory. Alexandria’s effort to recognize this history falls under the last part of the publication.
“Alexandria is doing a lot to acknowledge this past,” said Dr. De Fazio, “I hope more cities and towns across Virginia pick up the model.”
The brainchild of Dr. De Fazio, who initiated a digital history project that catalogues reported lynchings that took place in Virginia since the end of the Civil War, a nonacademic book, he said, seemed like the best way to make this history accessible to the general public.
Dr. De Fazio opened the volume with the 1899 lynching of Benjamin Thomas in Alexandria. He selected this history because it encapsulates the nature of lynching. This was not just a few bad actors engaging in a lethal mob, he said, it was large tolerant communities, including churches, police and courts.
“Lynching was possible only because of the system of complicity - a complicity of silence - these were collective ways in which white supremacy was asserted and reasserted, knowing full well lynching was murder without trial and could be done with impunity because of the larger culture, society, system that allowed it to happen,” he said.
The fact that Joseph McCoy and Benjamin Thomas were lynched in Alexandria, a city with an established Free African American community before the Civil War, that sent George Seaton, who was Black, to represent it in the first legislature to meet after the war, shows how routine lynching had become – even outside of the Deep South – by the turn of the century. Today, Alexandria’s work to reckon with racial terror and past injustices exemplifies a new movement to atone. For these reasons, starting and ending the book by highlighting Alexandria presented a “nice arc between past and present,” DeFazio said.
Restoring History, Writing the Narratives of Alexandria’s Two Documented Lynchings is the last essay. It was completed by early 2021, written during a summer filled with Black Lives Matter marches, when many white people were jolted into self-reflection and before the backlash against teaching truth in history.
“We had the wind pushing our sails and it kept us going,” said Maddy McCoy, one of the authors of the chapter.
Coauthor Elizabeth Lockwood agreed, saying it felt as though “everyone is with us, and then,” suddenly, “nobody is with us!”
McCoy and Lockwood wrote the essay with Farar Elliott, Susan Flinn, Ann Marie Hay, Christopher Milko and Rob Taylor, all of whom had worked on the Benjamin Thomas narrative for the Alexandria Community Remembrance Project.
When ACRP launched the Research Committee in October 2019, nearly 50 people signed up as volunteers. Maddy McCoy, founder of the Slavery Index Database, chaired the group and represented them on ACRP’s Steering Committee.
Over the next few months, McCoy said the process the volunteer researchers went through as they began to dig into the past taught her a valuable lesson. When Black and white people sit down to crack open our traumatic past there should be a mental health professional on hand.
“Everyone comes to the table with different histories. We have to sit at the table, unpack and listen to each other and we need a mental health professional to help us not fall into racial boxes of perceived behavior,” she explained.
Because we live in a default white society that doesn’t teach a full unbiased account of history in our schools, white people need to learn how to listen differently, she explained.
“We needed somebody to say, ‘this is an issue that comes up historically for white people - let's unpack what we just heard here,” McCoy said.
“History cannot be opened up, shared and talked about without emotions being addressed. It is too layered, too heavy and too oppressive. You have lots of white people asking, ‘what's the problem, this was a hundred years ago’ and then we learned, “it was just a hundred years ago - you can reach out and touch that still.”
Lockwood said researching this history “made me realize the past is not as far in the past as we thought it was. We were discovering businesses that still exist or names of neighbors that are still in Alexandria - not as much time has passed as we like to think.”
This is where Alexandria really benefited from Lillian Patterson’s involvement with ACRP’s research committee, according to McCoy and Lockwood. Patterson, a native Alexandrian and former Curator of Alexandria’s Black History Museum, worked with the committee during the year they met. McCoy described Patterson as “the sage in the room,” a quiet wise woman, who on occasion would jar those present, when “she channeled the maternal rage of the community. She is a remarkable woman and community member. Her amazing work needs to be acknowledged.”
The conversations were tough and emotional and some people dropped off the committee, “not everyone wants to, or should have to, carry through,” said McCoy, who hopes other communities will benefit from Alexandria’s experience. By the time COVID shut down the world, the group of researchers whittled down to 10 consistent volunteers. They finished the original draft narratives for McCoy and Thomas by the end of the summer of 2020 and took a much-needed break. At the same time, Dr. De Fazio approached McCoy about his book idea.
McCoy pulled together six of those researchers to write the chapter for Lynching in Virginia. They were all white. While working across communities on the narratives brought forth important lessons, with this chapter the researchers were trying to communicate to those in the white community who have not learned this history. They hope to help white readers see the role that whiteness has played in our past and continues to impose upon our culture and institutions.
James Baldwin wrote in The Fire Next Time, “The American negro has the great advantage of having never believed the collection of myths to which white Americans cling, that their ancestors were all freedom—loving heroes, that they were born in the greatest country the world has ever seen, or that Americans are invincible in battle and wise in peace, that Americans have always dealt honorably with Mexicans and Indians and all other neighbors or inferiors…” he ends by calling white people “slightly mad victims of their own brainwashing.”
“It comes down to antiracism work,” said McCoy, adding, “it’s white people who set up this default society for their own comfort 400 years ago – and it’s white people who need to do the work.”
Since the research committee disbanded in 2021, ACRP has continued to advance their original research refining facts and adding significant context to the stories of Joseph McCoy and Benjamin Thomas, including locating McCoy and Thomas descendants.
In the three years since McCoy’s team wrote the chapter that was just published, ACRP has grown beyond erecting historic markers and creating a memorial with the Equal Justice Initiative’s pillar, to include building relationships across communities, holding tough conversations, supporting the integration of Black history into the common consciousness and striving for transformational justice for Alexandrians.
“We are not stopping,” said Audrey Davis, co-chair of ACRP, “we are going to keep this up until we have fully integrated our history from before John West’s tobacco warehouse stood on a bluff at the foot of Oronoco Street when the Tauxenents and Nacotchtanks prospered here, through the brutal years of human enslavement, reconstruction, Jim Crow, the lynching era and massive resistance to today’s injustices. We are not going to stop until the achievements of Alexandria's African Americans are recognized along the Duke Street Corridor, until people near and far know the stories of Joseph McCoy and Benjamin Thomas, of Freedom House, and of our civil rights heroes. Alexandria’s shared history is rich and deep and by integrating our past we create the foundation for a reconciled, inclusive future.”
Bryan Stevenson said we have to change the narrative so that we can “usher in an era of truth and justice, truth and reconciliation, truth and restoration.”
We concur.
Lynching in Virginia can be purchased at The Lyceum, The Alexandria Black History Museum and Freedom House.
In Remembrance
We acknowledge the death of Marcellus Williams, 55, who was killed by Lethal Injection in Missouri on Tuesday, September 24, after a massive effort to have him exonerated was dismissed. Even those who had prosecuted Williams said they were wrong. Yet, late Tuesday afternoon, the U.S. The Supreme Court denied the effort to stay the execution, despite Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson disagreeing with the decision. The NAACP called his state sanctioned death a lynching. “Tonight, Missouri lynched another innocent Black man. When DNA evidence proves innocence, capital punishment is not justice - it is murder,” stated NAACP President Derrick Johnson. Again, we concur.
Upcoming Events
View the Historic Alexandria Calendar
Tickets On Sale Now for Tables of Conscience!! First one Saturday, Oct. 26!!
We are excited to announce a new round of Tables of Conscience book-themed dinners to raise money for the 2025 scholarships in the names of Joseph McCoy and Benjamin Thomas. These dinners will be held in October and November in order to raise the amount needed by March 1, 2025 for two $3000 scholarships for Alexandria City High School students. The first one is October 26 - each dinner is from 6-9 p.m. and costs $125 per person. Please go to our webpage to learn more and to purchase tickets. Sign up soon before the seats are gone!
Saturday, October 26, 2024, 6-9 p.m.
Book: The Hate You Give, By Angie Thomas
This award-winning book is about an African American teen, Starr Carter, who sees a white police officer kill her best friend from childhood. Mississippi Author, Angie Thomas, shares a no holds barred story about how Carter experiences this murder and reacts to the racism surrounding her at home, school and in the world. Although this book is classified as a Young Adult Novel, it has been recommended for adults and has been described as a compelling, thought-provoking read. As this book has been banned in multiple places and is on several additional challenged book lists, readers will be participating in a bit of activism by choosing to discuss it.
Total of 12 Tickets Available
Saturday, November 2, 2024, 6-9 p.m.
Book: In the Pines: A Lynching, A Lie, A Reckoning, By Grace Elizabeth Hale
When she first heard her mother’s story about a thwarted lynching in a small Mississippi town where Hale’s grandfather was the sheriff and seeming hero, the author of In the Pines: A Lynching, A Lie, A Reckoning, was a college student. The family lore inspired Hale, who is white, to focus her graduate studies on “whiteness,” which led to the publication of her earlier book (and a ToC dinner book in 2023), Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South 1890-1940. During a visit to her grandmother’s house, Hale discovered a 1947 front page article detailing the lynching of Versie Johnson. The graduate student immediately realized the news account - and family lore - wasn’t true, but she wasn’t sure what to do with the new insight. But after watching her students protest the white supremacists march through Charlottesville in 2017, Hale knew she had to research this piece of racial terror history and tell the truth. Bryan Stevenson called her book “courageous and compelling” and an “essential and critically important” read.
Total of 12 Tickets Available.
Saturday, November 16, 2024, 6-9 p.m.
Book: The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy: and the Path to a Shared American Future, Robert P. Jones
The roots of white supremacy reach back to the 15th century and the Doctrine of Discovery - a belief that God gave Christians the right to dominate any land not already inhabited by the faithful, according to its author Robert P. Jones, who is also founder and president of the Public Religion Research Institute. This book explores the connection of past injustices and massacres perpetrated against native and Black Americans, while also examining current attempts to repair these historic wrongs. The New York Times said it is “full of urgency and insight.”
8 tickets available.
Film: Resolved: Never Again
Fri. Nov. 8, 12-4:30 p.m.
Charles E. Beatley Library
5005 Duke St, Alexandria, VA 22304
The Alexandria Film Festival selected Resolved: Never Again as a feature that will close out the block of films being shown on Friday, Nov. 8. Filmmaker Robin Hamilton will provide remarks and lead a discussion after the screening.
Film: James Baldwin’s Price of the Ticket
Sun. Nov. 10 at 3:30-5:30 p.m.
Alexandria History Museum at The Lyceum
201 South Washington Street, Alexandria, VA 22314
ACRP and Alexandria Black History have teamed up with the Alexandria Film Festival to show the James Baldwin film Price of the Ticket on Sunday, Nov. 10 at 3:30 at the Lyceum. A panel with filmmaker Karen Thorsen and Producer Douglas Dempsey moderated by ACRP’s RaAlim Shabazz will follow the 87 min. documentary. Born 100 years ago, James Baldwin’s legacy as a civil rights activist and a writer has only become more profound. This newly restored and remastered film gives us Baldwin in his own words, with scenes of the world he lived in and observations of those who knew him best. Tickets will be available at the Alexandria Film Festival website beginning Oct. 4, 2024.
Looking for Ways to Get Involved?
The fall offers several opportunities for you to get involved with ACRP including, attending a meeting of the Schools and Libraries Action Committee, attending a Tables of Conscience dinner, going to the film festival to see Resolved: Never Again on Friday, Nov. 8 at Beatley Library, and or, viewing the James Baldwin film the Price of the Ticket on Nov. 10 at the Lyceum followed by a panel.
We have ACRP merch!
You can find T-Shirts with the ACRP logo on the front and the words “nothing but the whole truth” on the back, ACRP logo mugs, magnets and lapel pins in the Alexandria Black History Museum shop. Wearing our logo or drinking a cup of coffee from a logo adorned mug could prompt questions and an opportunity to discuss the truth about our past. Be sure to check it out!
In the News
ACRP Premier of Resolved: Never Again
On Saturday, Sept. 21, ACRP debuted Resolved: Never Again, a documentary about the lynchings of Joseph McCoy and Benjamin Thomas and Alexandria’s efforts to acknowledge and remember this past. The film by Robin Hamilton of ARound Robin Productions was well received. The next opportunity to see the film will be as part of the Alexandria Film Festival on Nov. 8 at Beatley Library starting at noon several films will be shown ending with Resolved and followed by a discussion with film maker Robin Hamilton, the event finishes at 4:30 p.m. Please go to the film festival page by clicking here to purchase tickets starting Oct. 4, 2024.
Tenth Anniversary of Freedman’s Cemetery
On Sept. 6 and 7th, Alexandria celebrated the Restoration of Freedman’s Cemetery, remembered those buried there and honored the tireless work of the late Lillie Finklea and her friend Louise Massoud who advocated for the historic cemetery. Freedman’s is the last resting place for more than 1700 self-liberated African Americans who died in Alexandria during and after the Civil War. At an event for descendants of those buried here, Pastor Michelle Thomas, president of Loudoun County’s NAACP and historic preservationist, spoke about the “half that has never been told,” urging those present to create more stories from the voice of descendants and ensure they are codified into our public history. Because, Thomas said, “if you don’t know what happened to Black people in this country you are going to hurt people you are trying to help.” She then told a story that unfolded after a picture emerged of former Gov. Ralph Northam in Black Face at a college party.
Thomas said she was shocked that such a well-educated man would behave in such a way until she realized he had no education on slavery or any other aspect of African American history. “Even those educated in the 80s and 90s” were not educated in our shared history.
“I grew up in Alexandria, did my laundry across from Freedom House and I did not know about the slave pen - how was I born in Alexandria, went through schools in Alexandria and I didn’t know? I promised myself that I will never walk in the city I was born in and not know its history. It is important that everyone who looks like me knows that history too.”
Jim Wallis on Faith and Democracy
Georgetown University’s Chair of Faith and Justice, Jim Wallis spoke at the Virginia Theological Seminary on Sept. 26 about Democracy. Speaking out against White Christian Nationalism, he called for other Christian churches and congregants to do the same, especially as we enter an election season that could be followed by uncertainty and violence. Wallis said that the separation of church and state does not require abandoning morals or values and with a message of hope and encouragement.
Upcoming Committee Meetings
The next Alexandria Community Remembrance Project Steering Committee Meeting will be held Tues. Oct. 8 at 5 p.m. at Alexandria Black History Museum.
Past Committee Meetings
The Alexandria Community Remembrance Project Steering Committee met on Sept. 10 at the Alexandria Black History Museum and discussed the Thomas Remembrance, upcoming film debut and a regional meeting of remembrance groups ACRP is working on with Maryland coalitions set for early November.
ACRP Remembrance Students met on Sept. 23 at Alexandria City High School, this was an initial general interest meeting. It was well attended, discussion of field trips to local sites such as Freedom House, Alexandria library to learn about the sit-in and the Moss Hendrix Exhibit were discussed and students expressed interest in a spring or fall pilgrimage to EJI.
Alexandria Community Remembrance Project
The Alexandria Community Remembrance Project (ACRP) is a city-wide initiative dedicated to helping Alexandria understand its history of racial terror hate crimes and to work toward creating a welcoming community bound by equity and inclusion.
In Memoriam
Write "ACRP" in Comments on the donation form.
Office of Historic Alexandria
City of Alexandria, Virginia
ACRP@alexandriava.gov