Metadata for the
lynching database used on this site:

The lynching data for Monroe & Florence Work Today was compiled from listings of victims in 76 published academic sources. Extreme effort was taken to stitch together these sources carefully under the following guiding principle: More recent, more geographically-specific, or updated studies are allowed to correct the details that were recorded by a source that is older, covers a more general area, or indicated less confidence over a specific event.

When a death is documented by multiple authors with discrepancies among them, the author’s study which was more geographically-specific or was published more recently is considered the "better" source for purposes of resolving the discrepancy. That source then determined the final details entered in the database for that incident.

Monroe Work Today Dataset Compilation, version 1.0

Number of records: 7324
Marked as special cases: 16
Date range of regular cases: 1803 - 1964
Date range of special cases: 1818 - 2011

➙ An update of the historical records of Tuskegee Institute using modern scholarship published 1982–2016

Notes about version 1.0:

  • This dataset includes 43 persons’ deaths which are evaluated by modern scholars as not meeting the Tuskegee lynching definition.
  • This dataset includes people killed at the following events, although they cannot be confirmed to fit the Tuskegee lynching definition: the 1885 Chinese murders in Gilman, WA; the 1885 Chinese massacre in Sweetwater, WY; 1886 Chinatown fire in Truckee, CA; and the 1887 Chinese massacre in Hells Canyon, OR. These victims are flagged for inclusion or exclusion by future researchers.
  • In his tally at Tuskegee Institute, Mr. Work appears to have included some victims in certain race riots. In order to supplement his list for those particular riots, this dataset adds additional victims (as identified by other authors) unknown to Mr. Work for the following events: 1898 riot in Phoenix, SC; 1904 riot in Statesboro, GA; 1919 riot in Elaine, AR; and 1923 riot in Rosewood, FL. The additional victims are flagged for inclusion or exclusion by future researchers.
  • As is true with the historical Tuskegee Institute records, it is a known deficiency that this dataset omits lynchings which occurred before 1882 in the following states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia (before 1880), Mississippi, North Dakota, Oklahoma (before 1881), South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virgina/West Virginia (before 1881). This temporal gap is due to the fact that none of the available published sources survey these geographies before the 1880s.

Monroe Work Today Dataset Compilation, version 1.1

Number of records: 8045
Marked as special cases: 16
Date range or regular cases: 1803 - 1964
Date range of special cases: 1818 - 2011

➙ Adds victims of urban mob violence that may not be lynchings

➙ Note: This version 1.1 contains the same deficiency as the prior version for the omission of lynchings in certain states in years prior to 1882. This temporal gap is due to the fact that none of the available published sources survey these geographies before the 1880s.

Changes in version 1.1:

  • 686 persons added, identifying victims killed in acts of mob violence that cannot be confirmed to fit the Tuskegee lynching definition.

Data dictionary for version 1.0 - 1.1:

[Click here to view]

In general, any fields that were computed by auut studio, and not part of the source author’s record, are prefixed by the letters mwt_

FieldDescription
mwt_id An arbitrary, unique number to identify each record for Monroe&FlorenceWorkToday
mwt_en_masse A flag that attempts to mark incidents where multiple people were killed in the same town on the exact same day (to the best of auut studio’s interpretation). This flag is simply for the convenience of a researcher to search quickly for multi-victim events.
state The state in which the incident occurred as recorded in the "better" source
year_source The year of the event as recorded in the better source
month_source The month as recorded in the better source (or blank if not recorded)
day_source The day of the month as recorded in the better source (or blank if not recorded). Note that dates of lynchings recorded among authors very often disagree by a few days or more. This nearly always relates to the ambiguity of a newspaper article: published a week after the event without a clear date, or unclearly stating the date of a mob's seizure vs. discovery of the victim's death, or the difference from nightfall to early morning in events spanning across midnight.
  • When a date in this field has been corrected by less than 15 days, it was changed to the more recent source's version without comment.
  • When a date was corrected by greater than 15 days, a note was added to mwt_sources_discrepancy.
mwt_date_txt An imputed date for the incident, created by filling in any blank months or days in the historical record. An unknown month of the year is forced in this field to be January 1st of the year_source; an unknown day is forced to the 15th of the month_source. Any records that note being "Early" in the month are forced to the 5th day of the month_source, or that note occurring "late" in the month are forced to the 25th day of the month_source.
name A person's name as recorded in the better source
name_alias_spelling Alternate name(s) appearing in the historical record for the same person, whether mispellings or simply erroneous identifications that were later corrected
race_source The race/ethnicity recorded in the source. This attempts to preserve the terminology of the source author, even if it is not auut studio’s preferred terminology to describe one race or ethnicity. For example: some individuals may be originally documented in the Tuskegee Archives’ record as Unnamed Negro, yet other individuals that were race unknown at the time are corrected by more recent sources to be Black.
mwt_race The race/ethnicity displayed on the Monroe&FlorenceWorkToday website; in some cases it has been interpreted differently than race_source by auut studio.
sex The sex of the person recorded in the source, if known
alleged The trangression that was alleged of the person [in an attempt to justify their killing], according to the source
mwt_alleged_category An interpretation by auut studio of the alleged field, collapsed into fewer categories:
  • Assault/Threat against Persons
  • Assault/Attack upon Women
  • Crime against property
  • Insult to White Persons
  • Labor or Economic Competition
  • Murder or Attempted murder
  • Murder-Rape
  • Alleged Sexual crime
  • Absence of a crime
  • Other
town The town recorded in the better source (or blank if not recorded)
county The county recorded in the better source (or blank if not recorded)
source1, source2, source3, source4 An arbitrary code that refers to the published sources in which the person is documented. For a list of the codes please use the bibliography
mwt_sources_discrepancy Brief notes to describe how later sources contradict and/or were allowed to correct earlier sources
mwt_notes_ab_record Internal notes used by the Monroe&FlorenceWorkToday project
mwt_county_id A matching key to the source county, using the data schema of the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries <http://publications.newberry.org/ahcbp/>
mwt_county_version A matching key to the temporal "version" of mwt_county_id, using the data schema of the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries <http://publications.newberry.org/ahcbp/>
mwt_county_keyid A concatenation of the two fields mwt_county_id and mwt_county_version, which creates a unique key that can be used to join the lynching records to AHCBP’s GIS files
mwt_white_supremacy A numerical flag for assessment of the motivation of the perpetrators or circumstances. This represents only the assessment by auut studio from its own research for purposes of this particular project. ALL researchers are cautioned to independently interpret the record according to their own expertise.
  • < 0 > this death is not interpreted here as an act of white supremacy
  • < 0.25 > this death of a person of color is related to an alleged crime of stock theft; it is not interpreted here as an act of white supremacy
  • < 1 > this death is interpreted here as an act of white supremacy
mwt_included A category of assessment for inclusion of the person’s death in the Monroe&FlorenceWorkToday map. This represents only the assessment by auut studio from its own research for purposes of this particular project. ALL researchers are cautioned to independently interpret the record according to their own expertise.
  • < 0 > this death was not included on the M&FWT map, for various reasons
  • < 0.25 > this death is interpreted as a victim of mob violence (e.g. race riots or massacres), but is not interpreted by auut studio as a lynching
  • < 0.5 > this death had some uncertainty for fitting the definition of a lynching, expressed by a source author or in the assessment of auut studio
  • < 1 > this death is interpreted as a lynching to appear on the M&FWT map
  • < 3 > this death is interpreted as a special case for consideration
mwt_included_reason A brief note of explanation when mwt_included is assigned categories 0 or 3
mwt_find_duplicate A string that matches the pair of two (or more) records, in which one incident appears to be a double-count of another, according to the research assessment by auut studio. ALL researchers are cautioned to independently interpret the record according to their own expertise.
mwt_sequence The number of days since 1/1/1834 to the mwt_date_txt. This allows quick sort of all records in chronological order
mwt_mob_race An (unreliable) assessment of the ethnic composition of the perpetrators. Data in this field was usually indicated from a source author, but sometimes was imputed by auut studio based on outside information. No data in this field should be assumed to be 100% reliable. This field was used to exclude certain incidents done by non-white mobs from the Monroe&FlorenceWorkToday map, whose project is focused on white supremacy actions.

Monroe Work Today Dataset Compilation, version 1.2

Number of records: 8388
Marked as special cases: 27
Date range or regular cases: 1803 - 1964
Date range of special cases: 1818 - 2011

In a collaboration from 2018–2019, auut studio and scholar Demar F. Lewis worked together to further expand the compilation by comparing it with lynching inventories of other scholars published in 2009–2017. As in earlier versions: extreme effort was taken to stitch together these sources carefully, avoiding the duplication of any records already contained in the MWTDC version 1.1.

➙ Expands temporal coverage back to 1877 for the Southern states

➙ Expands temporal coverage back to 1851 for Shelby County, Tennessee

➙ Improves coverage in Nebraska

➙ Note: Although coverage has been expanded back to 1877, it is a known deficiency that this dataset still omits 790 lynchings which have been identified recently by Dr. E.M. Beck in the following states in years prior to 1877: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virgina/West Virginia. This dataset also omits any lynchings which may have occurred in North Dakota before 1882 or in Oklahoma before 1881. These temporal gaps are due to the fact that none of the available published sources survey these geographies during these years.

Changes in version 1.2:

  • Incorporates the inventory of Dr. Crystal Feimster, Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching, Harvard University Press: 2009.
  • Incorporates 25% of the records in the CSDE Lynching Database (Tolnay-Bailey-Beck Database of Southern Lynch Victims, 2015), http://lynching.csde.washington.edu/ (update as of 20 February 2017)
    • Those database records for events occuring prior to 1882 were integrated
    • Those database records were integrated in which the mob participants are noted to have originated from a different county than the county where the victim was killed
    • Those database records were integrated which correspond to the events recorded in Feimster 2009
    • Those database records were integrated in which the earlier inventory Tolnay-Beck 1995 had indicated some uncertainty; these were updated to reflect the confidence level identified in Tolnay-Beck-Bailey 2015
  • 290 persons added, identifying victims in the years 1877–1883 in the following Southern states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia.
  • 33 persons added, identifying victims in the years 1890–1935 in the following states: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia.
  • 4 persons added, identifying victims of mobs originating in West Virginia in the years 1882 and 1905.
  • 1 person added, a victim in 1965 in Alabama.
  • 1 person added, a victim in 1836 in Alta California, México.
  • Partially incorporates the inventory of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, Year End Report 2016, https://crrj.northeastern.edu/
    • 9 persons added, identifying victims in the years 1934–1956 in the following states: Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida.
  • Incorporates the inventory of the Lynching Sites Project of Memphis, https://lynchingsitesmem.org/ (as of 31 January 2017)
    • 15 persons added, identifying victims in Shelby County, TN, in the years 1851–1875.
  • Incorporates the inventory of James Potter, “‘Wearing the Hempen Neck-Tie’: Lynching in Nebraska, 1858-1919,” Nebraska History 93 (2012): 138-153.
    • 17 persons added, identifying victims in Nebraska in the years 1858–1897.
  • 1 record marked as a duplicate: mwt_id 6706.
  • New fields were added:  source5 ,  age ,  method ,  source_confidence_lynching_definition ,  DFL_included ,  auut_county_represented_reason
  • Old field state was separated into state_killed and state_mob
  • Old field county was separated into county_killed and county_mob
  • Old field mwt_included was renamed to auut_included
  • Old field mwt_included_reason was renamed to auut_included_reason
  • Old field mwt_white_supremacy was renamed to auut_white_supremacy
  • Old field mwt_race was renamed to auut_race
  • Old field mwt_category was renamed to auut_category
  • Old field mwt_subcategory was renamed to auut_subcategory
  • Old field mwt_county_id was renamed to auut_county_represented_on_map
  • Old field mwt_county_version was renamed to auut_county_ver
  • Old field mwt_county_keyid was renamed to auut_geo_id

Data dictionary for version 1.2:

[Click here to view]

In general, any fields that were computed or imputed by auut studio from source data, but not part of the source author’s record, are prefixed by the letters mwt_

Any fields that represent auut studio's interpretation or decision (therefore, a debatable opinion) are prefixed by the letters auut_, and fields which indicate an interpretation or decision of Demar Lewis are prefixed DFL_

FieldDescription
mwt_id An arbitrary, unique number to identify each observation for Monroe&FlorenceWorkToday
source1, source2, source3, source4, source5 An arbitrary code that refers to the published source(s) in which the observation is documented. For a list of the codes please use the bibliography.
source_confidence_lynching_definition The term or language used by the "better" source author to describe their confidence in attributing the event as a “lynching,” according to their own definition of that term
auut_included A category of assessment for inclusion of the person’s death in the Monroe&FlorenceWorkToday map. This represents only the assessment by auut studio from its own research for purposes of this particular project. ALL researchers are cautioned to independently interpret the observation according to their own expertise.
  • < 0 > this death was not included on the M&FWT map, for various reasons.
  • < 0.25 > this death is interpreted as a victim of mob violence (e.g. race riots or massacres), but is not interpreted by auut studio as a lynching.
  • < 0.5 > this death had some uncertainty for fitting the definition of a lynching, expressed by a source author or in the assessment of auut studio.
  • < 0.75 > this death had less uncertainty for fitting the definition of a lynching, expressed by a source author. It is interpreted as a lynching to appear on the M&FWT map.
  • < 1 > this death is interpreted as a lynching to appear on the M&FWT map.
  • < 3 > this death is interpreted as a special case for consideration.
auut_included_reason A brief note of explanation when auut_included is assigned categories 0 or 3
DFL_included A binary assessment (0 or 1) for inclusion of the person’s death in statistical analysis. This field represents only the assessment by scholar Demar F. Lewis from his own research. ALL researchers are cautioned to independently interpret the observation according to their own expertise.
mwt_sources_discrepancy Brief notes to describe how later sources contradict and/or were allowed to correct earlier sources
mwt_find_duplicate A string that matches the pair of two (or more) observations, in which one incident appears to be a double-count of another, according to the research assessment by auut studio. ALL researchers are cautioned to independently interpret the observation according to their own expertise.
auut_white_supremacy A numerical flag for assessment of the motivation of the perpetrators or circumstances. This represents only the assessment by auut studio from its own research for purposes of this particular project. ALL researchers are cautioned to independently interpret the observation according to their own expertise.
  • < 0 > this death is not interpreted here as an act of white supremacy
  • < 0.25 > this death of a person of color is related to an alleged crime of stock theft; it is not interpreted here as an act of white supremacy
  • < 1 > this death is interpreted here as an act of white supremacy
mwt_en_masse A flag that attempts to mark incidents where multiple people were killed in the same town on the exact same day (to the best of auut studio’s interpretation). This flag is simply for the convenience of a researcher to search quickly for multi-victim events.
year_source The year of the event as recorded in the better source
month_source The month as recorded in the better source (or blank if not recorded)
day_source The day of the month as recorded in the better source (or blank if not recorded). Note that dates of lynchings recorded among authors very often disagree by a few days or more. This nearly always relates to the ambiguity of a newspaper article: published a week after the event without a clear date, or unclearly stating the date of a mob's seizure vs. discovery of the victim's death, or the difference from nightfall to early morning in events spanning across midnight.
  • When a date in this field has been corrected by less than 15 days, it was changed to the more recent source's version without comment.
  • When a date was corrected by greater than 15 days, a note was added to mwt_sources_discrepancy.
name A person's name as recorded in the better source
name_alias_spelling Alternate name(s) appearing in the historical record for the same person, whether mispellings or simply erroneous identifications that were later corrected
race_source The race/ethnicity recorded in the source. This attempts to preserve the terminology of the source author, even if it is not auut studio’s preferred terminology to describe one race or ethnicity. For example: some individuals may be originally documented in the Tuskegee Archives’ record as Unnamed Negro, yet other individuals that were race unknown at the time are corrected by more recent sources to be Black.
race_detailed_origin Additional language used to identify race/ethnicity as recorded in the source.
auut_race The race/ethnicity displayed on the Monroe&FlorenceWorkToday website; in some cases it has been interpreted differently than race_source by auut studio.
auut_r A numerical code for auut_race
sex The sex of the person recorded in the source, if known
town_killed The town in which the person was killed, as recorded in the better source (or blank if not recorded)
state_killed The state in which the person was killed, as recorded in the better source (or blank if not recorded)
county_killed The county in which the person was killed, as recorded in the better source (or blank if not recorded)
state_mob The state from which the participants in the mob originated, assumed in this dataset (as the source author assumed) to be equal to state_killed unless otherwise recorded by the author.
county_mob The county(ies) from which the participants in the mob originated, assumed in this dataset (as the source author assumed) to be equal to county_killed unless otherwise recorded by the author.
alleged The trangression that was alleged of the person [in an attempt to justify their killing], according to the source
mob_race An (unreliable) assessment of the ethnic composition of the perpetrators. Data in this field was usually indicated from a source author, but sometimes was imputed by auut studio based on outside information. No data in this field should be assumed to be 100% reliable. This field was used to exclude certain incidents done by non-white mobs from the Monroe&FlorenceWorkToday map, whose project is focused on white supremacy actions.
mob_size An (unreliable) assessment of the number of perpetrators. Data in this field was indicated from a source author, but no data in this field should be assumed to be 100% reliable.
auut_category An interpretation by auut studio of the alleged field, collapsed into fewer categories:
  • Assault/Threat against Persons
  • Crime against property
  • Insult to White Persons
  • Labor or Economic Competition
  • Murder or Attempted murder
  • Murder-Rape
  • Alleged Sexual crime
  • Absence of a crime
  • Other
auut_subcategory A more detailed taxonomy for certain categories in auut_category, which is also an interpretation by auut studio of the alleged field.
mwt_notes_ab_record Internal notes used by the Monroe&FlorenceWorkToday project
mwt_date_txt An imputed date for the incident, created by filling in any blank months or days in the historical record. An unknown month of the year is forced in this field to be January 1st of the year_source; an unknown day is forced to the 15th of the month_source. Any observations that note being "Early" in the month are forced to the 5th day of the month_source, or that note occurring "late" in the month are forced to the 25th day of the month_source.
mwt_sequence The number of days since 1/1/1834 to the mwt_date_txt. This allows quick sort of all records in chronological order.
auut_county_represented_on_map A matching key to the field county_mob, using the data schema of the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries <http://publications.newberry.org/ahcbp/>
auut_county_represented_reason A brief note of explanation when auut_county_represented_on_map is not the same as county_mob.
auut_county_ver A matching key to the temporal "version" of auut_county_represented_on_map, using the data schema of the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries <http://publications.newberry.org/ahcbp/>
auut_geo_id A concatenation of the two fields auut_county_represented_on_map and auut_county_ver, which creates a unique key that can be used to join the lynching observations to AHCBP’s GIS files