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
Anti-Chinese Riot Produced a Reported Lynching
1889-03-12Milwaukee, Wisconsin • Possible lynching
In March 1889, anti-Chinese violence in Milwaukee escalated from courtroom threats to citywide attacks on Chinese laundries and residents. <i>The Pittsburg Post</i> and <i>The Great Falls Leader</i> described crowds shouting “Kill them” and officers barely preventing the lynching of Chinese laundrymen. The <i>Ashland Weekly News</i> later claimed that “early this morning a Chinaman was hanged by a mob at Twenty-Seventh and Chesnut streets.” Because the surviving newspaper accounts conflict between attempted and completed lynching, this remains a possible lynching in the archive.
Read full record →