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Handwriting so bad even AI can’t crack it
It happens often, as it did this month in Hagerstown, Md., when a person asked me, “What about Elvira? What happened to her?” Elvira and her disappearance are the most mysterious aspect of the Arthur Jordan story. For me, however, Dr. Gustavus Horner has second place locked down. As I recounted in Condemned for Love,
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Library of Virginia adds lynching site
Researchers who study lynchings in Virginia have a new database to work with. The Lynching and Racial Violence Collection went online in May. It is a collaboration of the Library of Virginia and Gianluca De Fazio, an associate professor of justice studies at James Madison University. The collection spans 1866-1932 and includes court records and
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New U.Va. book to include Jordan story
I know the rule: Don’t draw conclusions from a small sample size. But I’m tempted to do so, given my experience with two types of publishers, a commercial publisher and an academic one. I see the one, the commercial publisher, as similar to a rocket-docket court system: Move ’em in, move ’em out. The other,
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The Maryland connection
As the title says, Condemned for Love is a Virginia story. But after preparing for last night’s talk in Hagerstown, I realized how much it is also a Maryland story. I revised my deck of PowerPoint slides before appearing at the Washington County Free Library. I was part of its McCauley Lecture Program, and I
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The start is somewhere in the middle
“The rumble of the horses woke the dog first, and the dog woke Charles Martin.” I started Condemned for Love in Old Virginia with that sentence and decided last week to start my talk that way too. I was to speak at the Afro-American Historical Association of Fauquier and wanted to try something different. Usually,
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Elvira? To her, only one possibility
I tried, goodness knows I tried. I spent months if not years trying to figure out what happened to Elvira Corder. The best I could do was an educated guess, speculation born of all that research. That’s why I’m so surprised when I meet someone who speaks with certainty about Elvira’s fate. It’s happened twice,
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Three talks and free pizza to boot
September will be a busy month for me with three talks scheduled, all in Fauquier County, all free and open to the public. And one includes a free lunch. That’s right, you can hear me and enjoy some pizza. On Tuesday, Sept. 19, at 1 p.m., I’ll be in The Plains, Va., at the Afro-American
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Discomfort? Yes, that was a goal
When a friend suggested that Condemned for Love might be banned, I didn’t think much about it. When a second person said the same thing about a week later, I took note. “It struck me again and again how your book would be banned in several states because it tells an ugly truth,” my friend
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Twice he challenged the lynchers
Of all the characters in Condemned for Love, Colly Pattie strikes me as one of the most interesting. Colly was witness to two lynchings, tried to stop them and failed both times. Colly was 17 and asleep in the family quarters in the county jail in Warrenton when the first lynching occurred. His father, Horace,
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A single tombstone confirms the spot
One of the curious features of Dr. Augustus Horner’s drawing of the Arthur Jordan lynching is his placement of a single tombstone in his sketch. A single tombstone in the Warrenton Cemetery? The place is enormous. Perhaps Horner meant it as representative of the many other markers there. No, Horner drew what he saw. If
Author & Lecturer
Jim Hall 