The history of lynching and racial terror in America is the focus of an ambitious new project launched Tuesday by Google, in partnership with the Equal Justice Initiative.
Google has helped create a new interactive site titled “Lynching in America,” which is based on an 80-page publication by the EJI. Its research has been adapted into a powerful visual narrative about the horror and brutality that generations of black Americans have faced.
The site consists of audio stories from the descendants of lynching victims, and a documentary short called “Uprooted,” which chronicles the impact of lynching on black families. The project also includes an interactive map that details locations of racial terror lynchings, complete with profiles of the victims and the stories behind their deaths.
The goal of the project is to give people access to a more comprehensive view of the historical and social impact of widespread lynching in the South, which was a catalyst for the Great Migration.
“Google has been able to take what we know about lynching, and what we have heard from the families, and what we have seen in the spaces and the communities where these acts of terror took place, and make that knowledge accessible to a lot more people,” said Bryan Stevenson, founder of EJI, in a press release. “To create a platform for hearing and understanding and seeing this world that we’ve lived through.”
Google has previously worked with EJI, donating a $1 million grant to the organization in 2015 to fund its From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration Museum. To celebrate the launch of the project, Google has donated another $1 million to EJI to support its racial justice work.
To learn more about the project, visit http://lynchinginamerica.eji.org.
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