The John Crow Project
Documenting the history of anti-Chinese lynchings, riots, and massacres
in the American West (1850 – 1915)
What Is the John Crow Project?
Between the California Gold Rush and the First World War, Chinese immigrants were subjected to a coordinated regime of racial terror—lynchings, riots, expulsions, and legal exclusion. This project calls that Western system “John Crow”: a structure aimed at expulsion rather than subordination.
Drawing on a newly compiled dataset of documented lynchings, digitized newspaper archives, and spatial analysis, this site reconstructs how violence spread—across towns, along rivers and railroads, and through national print networks.
The interactive maps, timelines, and charts presented here translate the quantitative and spatial arguments of the dissertation into web-based form. Where possible, visualizations correspond directly to analytical figures developed in A Murder of Crows.
Quick Start
Browse lynching records by date, place, and event details.
Read article images, transcriptions, and source citations.
Open charts, maps, timelines, and comparative views.
Access structured data used across the archive.
Ask questions and trace evidence across records.
New to the site? Take the guided tour.
Featured Record
Conflicting Reports of a Double Lynching Involving Ed Moy
1915-10-11Clarksdale, Mississippi • Lynching
On October 11, 1915, newspapers reported that a masked mob in Clarksdale, Mississippi, took Ed Moy, a Chinese suspect, and a Black suspect from jail after the killing of banker A. H. Cage and lynched them. <i>The Plain Dealer</i> (Cleveland) mused, “Just to prove they are not moved by any narrow race prejudice a party of Mississippi gentlemen lynched a Chinaman.” <i>The Oregon Daily Journal</i> and <i>The Watchman and Southron</i> both printed the double-lynching account. But the next day <i>The Vicksburg Post</i> denied that either man had been lynched, reporting instead that Ed Moy had crawled back to town and that the other suspect remained at large. This is not the only case where local newspapers denied reports of a lynching, either because the facts of the case were embarrassing or were misreported. While widely reported, news articles differed on whether the two men were lynched, severely whipped, or unhurt. One report described a large gathering of white citizens deploring the violence. The same article denied reports that the two men were lynched, which, taken together, suggest a community intent on denying the facts of the case. If true, it is the last documented lynching of a Chinese person in the United States.
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