Racial violence in America: 60 years of whitewashing

T.The racist acts of violence described here represent just a few of the atrocities historians hear about to this day.

Anniversaries like Tulsa’s are becoming an opportunity for entire cities to re-examine their past, and we found that much of that work has been done by individuals – either professional historians or local history buffs.

Local media has been key to publicizing the work of historians that sparked conversations about these events. We have also seen newspapers that could rely on their own archives for this research, such as the Chicago Tribune.

Researchers who have long studied these events are increasingly combining them into digital projects where patterns are more visible to a wider audience. The Racial Violence Archive was created by Professor Geoff Ward at Washington University in St. Louis. He told CNN that he created the archive because he saw that so many of these stories had been suppressed and “the digital archive offers another avenue into this research and hopefully into the work of billing”.

James Loewen, who wrote the bestseller “Lies My Teacher Told Me” before his book “Sundown Towns”, has had a database for a long time in which he and his small, mostly voluntary team collect contributions on cities that have tried to colorize Driving people out. He told CNN he was still hearing about new incidents and posted them on its website.

Organizations such as Blackpast.org, the Smithsonian Institution, and PBS have also posted free resources on this story online.

Like Forsyth, communities across the country are working with the Equal Justice Initiative and others to erect markers that commemorate their violent history. This is an interesting phenomenon as more and more Confederate monuments are falling.

Finally, every time we investigated an incident for this project, we have checked to see if there has been an official return of funds or a return of property. In many cases, governments have officially apologized or recognized the victims of racial violence, but survivors and descendants have rarely received financial compensation for what they have suffered.

These include the 1921 Tulsa massacre, for which no one has been held accountable, and no compensation has been given for those who survived despite continued efforts.