Touch Icon Touch Anywhere to Begin

Aiming for Excellence, Facing Inequality

Start Over x
Tuskegee University

Tuskegee University

Tuskegee University houses the nation’s most complete record of lynchings occurring in the U.S. during an 86-year period spanning 1882 to 1968. During this time, 4,743 people were lynched — including 3,446 African Americans and 1,297 whites.

Efforts to catalog this information began in 1908 when Booker T. Washington hired sociologist Monroe Work to found Tuskegee’s Department of Records and Research Work’s diligence led to the initial publication in 1912 of the Negro Year Book: An Annual Encyclopedia of the Negro, which established the university as one of the most quoted and undisputed sources on this form of racial violence.

Today, the university’s lynching database remains an invaluable research and reference source for scholars and organizations such as the Equal Justice Initiative’s new National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery.