The Alexandria Community Remembrance Project (ACRP) invited the public to commemorative events to mark the 127th year since Joseph McCoy was brutally lynched.

Also view the earlier Memorial pages, from 2020 through 2023.

The Alexandria Community Remembrance Project marked the places in this city that were important to the story of the life and death of Joseph McCoy, an 18-year-old native Alexandrian accused of a crime and killed by a mob on April 23, 1897. The purple signs alerted passersby to Joseph McCoy’s existence and the role his life and death played in our shared history. The Remembrance Walk remains available on this website.

We hope that residents and visitors will step into the past and explore the crooked path that traces Joseph McCoy’s last hours. By walking the streets and noting the places where he lived, worked and was likely arrested, we remember a difficult part of Alexandria’s story.

City Hall, the old Station House Door of City Hall on N. Fairfax Street, the lynching location on N. Lee Street, and the George Washington Masonic Memorial will be illuminated in purple, the color of mourning, throughout the weekend to provide belated accountability, reconciliation, honor, and respect for McCoy. 

 The full account of this hate crime was methodically researched in 2020 by the 13-member Research Committee of the Alexandria Community Remembrance Project. 

The Lynching of Joseph H. McCoy, April 23, 1897

'Hanged by a Mob.' City marks 127th anniversary of McCoy lynching. Jeanne Theismann, Alexandria Gazette Packet, April 24, 2024.

We appreciate the Alexandria Gazette's report on the McCoy Remembrance events, but would like to clarify that Annie Lacy, was eight not nine years-old, when it was alleged Joseph McCoy assaulted her; and at the Remembrance Ceremony on April 23, 2024, Kim Young spoke on behalf of Rev. Franklin of Roberts Memorial United Methodist Church.

Stepping up by stepping into the past, Out of the Attic, Alexandria Times, April 18, 2024.

ACRP is a city-wide initiative dedicated to helping Alexandria understand its history of racial terror hate crimes. ACRP conducts research, education, programs, and events that remember Joseph McCoy and Benjamin Thomas and explores the long-term impacts upon Alexandria’s African American community. The work of ACRP is an effort to establish a welcoming community bound by equity and inclusion for all people.

Benjamin Thomas and Joseph McCoy are the only two documented Alexandria lynchings so far. McCoy was lynched on April 23, 1897. This year is the 125th anniversary of that event. It was commemorated on that date.