John Henry James was an African-American man who was lynched near Charlottesville, Virginia on July 12, 1898, for having allegedly raped a white woman.
"[1] Julia Hotopp, 20, from a prominent white family, reported that on the morning of July 11, 1898, she been assaulted by a "very black man, heavy-set, slight mustache, [who] wore dark clothes, and his toes were sticking out of his shoes.
"[7] At the time of the lynching, the grand jury was meeting, and had decided to indict him ("bring a true bill"),[4] but the documents had not yet been prepared.
Nikuyah Walker, Charlottesville Mayor, and Ann Mallek, a member of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors, members of the clergy, descendants of persons enslaved nearby, and racial justice activists were present, along with Susan Bro, mother of Heather Heyer, a counter-protester who was killed at the August 12, 2017, Unite the Right rally.
[8] The story of James is told on a new Albemarle County Web page, devoted to its participation in the Equal Justice Initiative's Community Remembrance Project.
[9] The next day, July 8, 2018, about 100 people from the Charlottesville area set off by bus with the soil on a week-long journey to Montgomery, Alabama, on a "pilgrimage through the civil rights landmarks of the South".
[10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18] The group was "expected to return with a six-foot tall steel monument commemorating James' lynching".
According to Washington Post reporter Joe Heim: In this city, still bearing the wounds of the deadly display of modern white supremacy that visited last August [2017], remembering this earlier act of racial violence, organizers said, reminds the nation that the history of hatred is deep in its bones and seeped in its soil.