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 Rioters Killed Look Young
1880-10-31Denver, Colorado • Riot
On Halloween night in 1880, anti-Chinese rioters surged through Denver’s Chinese quarter, destroying laundries and homes, beating residents, and killing Look Young, a Chinese laundry worker. <i>St. Albans Daily Messenger</i> said Denver had been “in the hands of a mob for eight hours” and described 1,500 rioters attacking Chinese homes, while <i>St. Louis Post-Dispatch</i> reported that “one Chinaman was lynched.” The riot formed part of a larger anti-Chinese campaign of expulsion and terror fueled by labor conflict, racial politics, and calls to drive Chinese residents out of the city. Law enforcement tried to intervene but was unsuccessful. The mob operated openly, unafraid of prosecution.
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