An Uncomfortable, Web-Based Roadside History Lesson
Dr. King's birthday is coming and has been my tradition, I've been thinking about doing a post. The first year of this blog, I linked to text and recordings from a couple of his more famous speeches and last year, I quoted from his big antiwar speech which was just recently cited in a Washington Post op-ed, which also tried to paint it in the context of Iraq.

Right now, I have a couple of ideas about things that I could write and perhaps we'll have to see if life will allow me to get something done in time to honor the man and his legacy, but as I was rolling through some thoughts, I struggled to remember a roadside historical marker that I believe was in central Virginia. This prompted me to start looking at the more than thirteen hundred titles that adorn those found in the Commonwealth and though I did not find the one for which I was looking, I did notice one marking the "Origin of Lynch Law". After absorbing the enormity of this thought, I flashed over to Wikipedia, where I read their entry on "Lynch Law", followed by the one entitled "Lynching in the United States".

This second Wikipedia entry told me that Tuskegee Institute started documenting lynchings within the United States starting in 1888, which they continued until 1968. And a google offered the following table of statistics, plus someone else's research listing of the documented lynchings between 1865 and 1965 or as the author calls it; "The Lynching Century".