Introduction to Digital History

A course page for HIST 209: Introduction to Digital History

StoryMap

The 1893 race riot in Roanoke began with a false accusation and ended with a lynching.  Its impact was felt for years in Roanoke due to the shattering of the city’s progressive image.  Below is a timeline of events and the biographies of the riot’s major figures.  Read on to discover what happened and more.

Bibliography

  • Amy Kate Bailey and Stewart Emory Tolnay. Lynched: The Victims of Southern Mob Violence. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015.
  • Dotson, Rand. Roanoke, Virginia, 1882-1912: Magic City of the New South. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2007.
  • Ivan Thomas Evans. Cultures of Violence: Racial Violence and the Origins of Segregation in South Africa and the American South. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009.
  • Nick Peterson and Geoff Ward. The Transmission of Historical of Racial Violence: Lynching, Civil Rights-Era Terror, and Contemporary Interracial Homicide. 2016.

For Pictures

  • Higgins, Casey L. “Fun for Everyone at Center in the Square in Virginia’s Blue Ridge.” Virginia’s Blue Ridge. January 17, 2019. Accessed April 09, 2019. https://www.visitroanokeva.com/blog/post/center-in-the-square-in-virginia-blue-ridge-mountains/.
  • Zillow, Inc. “612 Elm Ave SE, Roanoke, VA 24013 | Zillow.” Zillow Real Estate. Accessed April 09, 2019. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/612-Elm-Ave-SE-Roanoke-VA-24013/49664043_zpid/.
  • “About.” Taubman Museum of Art. Accessed April 09, 2019. https://www.taubmanmuseum.org/about.
  • Stevens, Tiffany. “Family Seeks Answer to High Suicide Rate at Roanoke Jail.” ABC 13 News. October 1, 2017. Accessed April 09, 2019. https://wset.com/news/local/family-seeks-answer-to-high-suicide-rate-at-roanoke-jail.
  • Alexander, Ann Field. “”Like an Evil Wind”: The Roanoke Riot of 1893 and the Lynching of Thomas Smith.” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 100, no. 2 (1992): 173-206. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4249275.
  • Giles. “Shameful Chapter in Virginia History: Lynchings.” The News Leader, Staunton, 17 May 2016, www.newsleader.com/story/news/local/2016/05/16/shameful-chapter-virginia-history-lynchings/84470508/.
  • “William Lavender in Roanoke County.” Racial Terror Lynching in Virginia 18771927, sites.jmu.edu/valynchings/va1892021201/.