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
Angry Mob Lynches A Chinese Man Accused of Murder and Robbery
1883-01-07Cheney, Washington • Lynching
Shortly after the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, two related lynchings occurred in the Pacific Northwest, reflecting the growing anti-Chinese agitation there. On January 6, 1883, in Weatherby, Oregon, an angry mob lynched an unnamed Chinese man accused of raping a white woman. Just a day later, a similar fate befell Lee Chow, a Chinese man, in Cheney, Washington Territory, who was accused of murder and robbery. The Los Angeles Herald reported that “A mob of eighty citizens went to the jail, broke the lock, and in ten minutes Chow was swinging to the limb of a neighboring pine” (January 9, 1883). The same report stated that “the guard made no resistance.” Lee Chow was accused of murdering and mutilating the body of a Chinese prostitute named Chung Sow. We see again how a mob broke into a jail, abducted a prisoner, and hanged the prisoner in an act of righteous vigilante justice. As was often the case, prison guards offered no resistance.
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