Coming Soon!
Condemned for Love in Old Virginia: The Lynching of Arthur Jordan by Jim Hall will be published by History Press in July 2023.
The romance of Arthur Jordan and Elvira Corder would have been unremarkable in another time and place. But in 1880 Virginia, it was doomed.
Condemned for Love in Old Virginia: The Lynching of Arthur Jordan describes this ill-fated relationship. It is a tale of temptation and loss, of love pursued in a time of hate, of concealment and disastrous disclosure. It raises questions about family, honor, and law in post-Reconstruction Virginia. It describes a conflict between genders and generations and illustrates the casual dehumanization of the other. Most importantly, it highlights the practice of lynching and the evil of racism, issues that are still with us.
Upcoming Events
July 6, 2023, 7 p.m. – Behind the Page, an author panel sponsored by the Central Rappahannock Regional Library, Zoom session.
July 17, 2023 – Publication of Condemned for Love in Old Virginia: The Lynching of Arthur Jordan.
Aug. 19, 2023, 1 p.m. – Book signing, Barnes & Noble, 1220 Carl D. Silver Parkway, Fredericksburg, Va.
Sept. 27, 2023, lunch – Public lecture, Laurel Ridge Community College, Fauquier, Va.
Oct. 2, 2023, 7 p.m. – Public lecture, McCauley Lecture Program, Western Maryland Room, Washington County Free Library, Hagerstown, Md.
The Last Lynching in Northern Virginia: Seeking Truth at Rattlesnake Mountain by Jim Hall was published by History Press on Sept. 12, 2016. You can order your copy at History Press, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble.
Henry and Mamie Baxley, a white couple, were attacked in the middle of the night in their bedroom by Shedrick Thompson, a black man who worked for them. The Last Lynching in Northern Virginia: Seeking Truth at Rattlesnake Mountain pieces together what happened that night and weeks later when Thompson’s body was found hanging from a tree a few miles away on Rattlesnake Mountain.
In recounting the events from that hot summer of 1932 in Fauquier County, author Jim Hall describes Thompson’s death as Virginia’s last recorded lynching. He examines the official cover-up that allowed Thompson’s murder to go unpunished. His work illustrates how Thompson’s death was but the latest chapter in Virginia’s long history of racial intolerance and violence.
“I recommend Hall’s book as a window into a time that seems like a different universe but is closer than we care to realize.”
“Lynchings, WWII and the Church” by Mark Tooley, Juicy Ecumenism (2017)
Jim Hall 