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
Judge Knowles Recalled an Unpunished Lynching
1868-07-04Henderson Gulch, Montana • Possible lynching
A 1904 article in <i>The Anaconda Standard</i> recalled that a Chinese man was lynched by a mob at Henderson Gulch in 1868. Judge William W. Knowles said he had tried to secure indictments when he was on the territorial supreme bench, but was unsuccessful. This case shows that even when an official tries to bring justice for a Chinese victim, the white community bands together to protect the perpetrators from meaningful punishment. Because the surviving evidence is retrospective and sparse, the case requires additional evidence.
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