The Red Record
By Lynching Sites Project
The Red RecordJan 03, 2022
Say his name: Unidentified victim, 1851
In this episode, we talk with Jen Bennie, a researcher with Lynching Sites Project and the host of the YouTube channel "Walk with History." She investigated a case of an unnamed man who was lynched in Memphis on Jan , 1851. In this case, Black man shot the county clerk who declared his freedom papers a forgery as he attempted to board a boat headed north. It is the first recorded lynching in Shelby County and extremely rare to happen before the Civil War. Though more than two dozen papers reported the lynching, none mentioned his name. Jen's experience highlights the difficulty of locating key facts about these significant historical event because of the deeply rooted disregard for Black lives that continues today.
What is Lynching? Part 2: Violence against Asian-Americans
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What is Lynching? Part 1: Racial Terror in the South
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People's Grocery PART 2
On March 9, 1892, Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Will Stewart were lynched in Memphis, TN. The Black men had formed a co-op called People’s Grocery that had drawn customers away from a nearby white competitor. Their murders led famed journalist and women’s suffragist Ida B. Wells to investigate the true racist motivations of lynchings and she was exiled soon after because of her writings.
Learn more here: https://lynchingsitesmem.org/lynching/peoples-grocery-lynchings-thomas-moss-will-stewart-calvin-mcdowell
Original newspaper article, page 1: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SB_0vvoDDg_xPJyBSfdWQhjgmqnqUAFh/view?usp=drivesdk
Original newspaper article, page 2: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XzMwEaX7nMOOKYW1Pi3J-RsGpA-27Wn6/view?usp=drivesdk
Above article courtesy of Memphis, Shelby County Room in Memphis Public Libraries.
People's Grocery PART 1
On March 9, 1892, Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Will Stewart were lynched in Memphis, TN. The Black men had formed a co-op called People’s Grocery that had drawn customers away from a nearby white competitor. Their murders led famed journalist and women’s suffragist Ida B. Wells to investigate the true racist motivations of lynchings and she was exiled soon after because of her writings.
Learn more here: https://lynchingsitesmem.org/lynching/peoples-grocery-lynchings-thomas-moss-will-stewart-calvin-mcdowell
Original newspaper article, page 1: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SB_0vvoDDg_xPJyBSfdWQhjgmqnqUAFh/view?usp=drivesdk
Original newspaper article, page 2: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XzMwEaX7nMOOKYW1Pi3J-RsGpA-27Wn6/view?usp=drivesdk
Above article courtesy of Memphis, Shelby County Room in Memphis Public Libraries.