Local newspaper editors in Virginia say they hadn’t been aware of their publications’ roles in the 1883 Danville massacre. “It’s just appalling,” Steven Doyle, editor of the Danville Register & Bee, said of historical headlines that were published about the 1883 Danville massacre — in which a white mob murdered six Black men and suppressed the African American vote before the statewide election.
Local historians Dean Hairston and Karice Luck-Brimmer, who are both African American, had trouble discovering their family history in Danville, Virginia. African American history can be difficult to uncover. Traditional histories were written by white citizens. White-owned newspapers have been carefully preserved, whereas few Black newspaper archives exist before the 20th century. Black genealogical records have been destroyed.
Danville, Virginia, was economically prosperous in 1883. The town’s tobacco industry alone brought in $1 million a week, according to Danville Deputy Police Chief Dean Hairston, who is also a local historian.
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