We’ve long known about horrific episodes of lynching in the South, but the story of widespread racial cleansing above and below the Mason-Dixon line has remained almost entirely unknown. Time after time in the period between Reconstruction and the 1920’s, whites banded together to drive out blacks in their midst.G,V They burned and killed indiscriminately and drove thousands from their homes, sweeping entire counties clear of anyone with dark skin. Many of these areas remain virtually all-white to this day.
Pulitzer Prize winning author Elliot Jaspin has spent the past ten years documenting the attempted genocides of America, resulting in his new book Buried in the Bitter Waters. Jaspin joins Coy Barefoot on WINA’s Charlottesville–Right Now to talk about his work.