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
Wang Foo Was Hanged for Opening a Laundry
1881-03-05Gothic, Colorado • Lynching
On March 5, 1881, in Gothic, Colorado, Wang Foo was hanged by local anti-Chinese vigilantes after opening a laundry and refusing to leave town. <i>The Evening Herald</i> reported that he “was warned to leave” and then “called upon by a committee” and hanged, while the <i>Kansas City Star</i> printed the blunt justification: “He refused to go.” The <i>Kansas City Star</i> listed the three names of the men sealing the fate of the Wang Foo. These men were self-proclaimed members of an anti-Chinese organization. The killing was part of the purge-era drive to exclude Chinese workers and businesses from Western mining towns.
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