After decades of silence about a long-ago Virginia lynching, one man pursues accountability, apologies and the meaning of racial reconciliation
John Johnson in Wythe County, Va., setting for a 1926 lynching that has come to consume him. By Stephanie McCrummen Stephanie McCrummen National enterprise reporter covering an array of subjects Email Bio Follow March 30 at 6:04 PM WYTHEVILLE, Va. — It was cold and snowing, but John Johnson had an appointment to keep. He wasn’t going to let the weather stop him, or the worsening cough he’d been ignoring the past week. He put on his black fedora and drove across town to see a friend.
For 30 years, he had been collecting every detail he could about the August 1926 lynching of a black man named Raymond Byrd by a white mob in Wytheville. The lynching was one of more than 4,000 documented in Southern states between 1877 and 1950, killings intended to terrorize black populations and reinforce white supremacy and whose perpetrators — while known to locals — were almost never convicted or even named, a tradition of secrecy that carried on in Wytheville.
Dozens of Virginia reporters who happened to be gathered for an event in Wytheville picked up the story, and soon, editorials around the state and beyond were condemning the “crime of collective bestiality” and the failure of Wytheville authorities to identify those in the mob. Certain memories stuck with him. He once saw a cross burning on a neighbor’s lawn. He remembered a mayor who did a summer minstrel show wearing striped pants, a plaid blazer and blackface. He remembered the white men who always sat in front of a certain store downtown, who would rub his head “like a dog” when he passed, or use rubber bands to shoot at him with fence nails.
“I wanted to know what happened, why it happened, who was involved, the whole detail about it,” he said. “I’m the keeper of the secret,” he said one afternoon. “I’ve got the names, and I don’t really right now know what to do with them before I die. And I’ve got to do something with them before I die.”John Johnson walks among gravestones at Murphyville Cemetery, where Wythe County African Americans were buried in the early 20th century. He was well known around Wythe County.
In another file was the transcript of John’s interview with his 94-year-old uncle, who said that in the days after the baby was born but before Byrd was arrested, Byrd had brought the infant to his house: There was an unsmiling, black-and-white photo of an African American man who had witnessed some part of all that, who was in his 80s when John tried to interview him.
She said, “Them old white people, I hate ’em all. I just don’t want ’em around me. I don’t trust ’em. The only thing I think about when I see ’em is bringing blood.” All of it was locked up inside his white-sided house on a grassy corner of Wytheville, where the name Raymond Byrd was nowhere to be found, not in any museum, not on any plaque, not in the newly added “African American loop” in the Wytheville walking tour guide. The killing of Raymond Byrd had been spoken of publicly in Wytheville only once, in 1993.
“I’m in line with him,” said a white woman named Maxine Dellinger, who was one of six whites there. “I’m 77 years old and I was born in that time period and I wasn’t aware of it. It’s an educational process for us.” “For people to get over a tragedy, most times you ask questions to take them back to where that tragedy happened, right?” he said. “So, as far as black people are concerned, when in the world have we ever sought counseling for all the things that happened to us?”
“What I’m saying,” Eric continued, “is if we’re not going to have those conversations, this ain’t ever going to go away. Doesn’t matter how many times you vote. We’ve been voting all this time—”“Look at the people who lost their lives to vote,” Eric said. Until now, he had not told Beverly what had been weighing on his mind lately. “I’m trying to decide about all my research, you know, what’s going to happen to it,” he began.
Ed Atwell had a long white beard, family photos on the walls and books about Gandhi on a shelf. Somewhere, he had the 1993 academic article about the lynching, which was how he had learned the full story about the great-grandfather he dimly recalled as a quiet man who gave him old tobacco pouches he used for marbles. He recalled how not long after the article came out, he had gotten an email from a descendant of Raymond Byrd, who wanted to talk.
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