The Lynchings of the South

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Between 1915 and 1920 alone, hundreds of thousands of black people moved out of the deep South to take those jobs. Seeing African Americans assert themselves in these ways didn't go over well with a lot of white people. Lynchings, which had declined in the first years of the 20th century, headed back upward during and after the war.

In 1919, a white mob forced the entire black population of Corbin, Kentucky, to leave, at gunpoint. It was one of many racial expulsions in the United States. What happened, and how such racial cleansings became “America’s family secret.”

The history of Corbin as presented by the Corbin city government, with no mention of the 1919 racial expulsion.

Elliot Jaspin’s book, Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansings in America