Our Story
Inspired by the work of Ida B. Wells, W. E. B. Du Bois, and the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, the Alabama Memory Project is an ongoing attempt to recapture the lives of the lynching victims and attempted lynching victims in Alabama before the worst day of their lives. We consider attempted lynchings along with documented lynchings in an effort to capture the breadth of lynch violence and its impact on survivors and their communities.
The Alabama Memory Project launched in January 2017 in response to student and community demand. In partnership with staff from the Equal Justice Initiative, we designed an undergraduate research class dedicated to researching the state's history, beginning with Tuscaloosa County. The project began with an initial dataset composed of documented lynching victims in Alabama between 1877 and 1945 as published by Equal Justice Initiative, the Tuskegee Institute, the CSDE Lynching Database, and Monroe Work Today. Since then, the Alabama Memory Project has gathered preliminary data suggesting more than 400 previously undocumented victims between 1865 and 1986.
The Alabama Memory Project is based at the University of Alabama. The project hosts a yearly research seminar in which undergraduates and graduate students collaborate with community leaders and historians to research victims’ lives. They dedicate their semester to working in local archives, libraries, museums, and published databases to understand the world of the victims and build a testimony to their lives. In many cases, students continue their research for years after completing the course.
We update the initial dataset annually with lynchings and attempted lynchings newly uncovered by our project.
This project has been generously supported by the University of Alabama, in particular the College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of History, and the Alabama Digital Humanities Center and Library System.
Meet the Leadership Team
Dr. John Giggie
Dr. Giggie is Associate Professor of History and African American Studies and Director of the Summersell Center for the Study of the South at the University of Alabama. He is the founder and director of the Alabama Memory project.
Isabella is a Ph.D. student at the University. They supervise all undergraduate researchers and manage all existing and new research.