A historical marker shares John Henry James’ story outside the Albemarle County Courthouse. (Photo by Dan Addison, University Communications)
Albemarle County’s Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office, with research assistance from the University of Virginia, is seeking to right a 125-year wrong: the unlawful indictment of a Black man who in 1898 had been accused of sexual assault of a white woman.
Albemarle’s current prosecutor said that even at the time of the alleged assault it wasn’t certain police arrested the right man. But before the case could go to court – in fact just a day after the arrest – a mob of 150 or more unmasked people lynched John Henry James on the outskirts of Charlottesville, just miles from UVA on Ivy Road.
James’ body was hung from a locust tree on the edge of property now owned by Farmington Country Club.
Present-day Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Hingeley will ask a judge on Wednesday to dismiss the charges. The case, however, isn’t about whether James was guilty or innocent of the alleged assault even though, according to Hingeley, “there are some real discrepancies with the evidence that was reported on that casts a lot of doubt on the accusation.”
Instead, Hingeley will ask for the dismissal because it was legally improper to indict James when the grand jury and the prosecutor knew he had been slain by a mob.
To best provide perspective on the events of the time, Hingeley reached out to Jalane Schmidt, the director of UVA’s Memory Project at the UVA Karsh Institute of Democracy and an associate professor of religious studies.
Jalane Schmidt, the director of UVA’s Memory Project at UVA’s Karsh Institute of Democracy and an associate professor of religious studies will provide historical documentation at the hearing. (Contributed photo)
In Schmidt, Hingeley said he found the perfect partner; someone who could expertly provide the historical context around the lynching. She is a noted scholar who has been working more than five years with partners to memorialize James. They succeeded in having a historical marker telling James’ story posted outside the Albemarle County Courthouse in 2019.
Hingeley is himself a UVA alumnus, having graduated from the School of Law in 1976.
“I am absolutely thrilled to be working with Jalane, partly because she is a UVA professor, but more importantly because of the depth of her knowledge and her work in this area,” he said. “She’s just an incredible resource and she’s one of so many terrific professors that UVA has that make UVA such a great institution.”
The marker about James was erected in 2019. (Photo by Dan Addison, University Communications)
Schmidt will join Hingeley Wednesday afternoon in a courtroom in the Albemarle County Courthouse for the hearing.
UVA Today reached Schmidt ahead of the hearing as she was finalizing her presentation.
“It was so inappropriate that a grand jury would hand down an indictment on a dead person,” she said. “You can’t indict a corpse. The prosecutor and the grand jury were told that he’d been killed and they still did this.”
Schmidt said that was a miscarriage of justice and a violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
“There was more concern to pass down an indictment against a dead man than there was to charge and pass down an indictment on the people who killed him,” she said.
No one from the lynch mob was ever prosecuted.
Schmidt said the grand jury’s action highlights “the animus of the system towards Black people at that time.”
Not much is known about James, including his age. Schmidt said in her research she learned that he lived in the Charlottesville area for a short time, perhaps six years. At the time he was killed, James didn’t appear to have any family in the region. A letter written by the wife of a UVA police officer at the time revealed another clue, that James was an ice cream vendor.
When asked why fighting to dismiss the indictment was important, Schmidt was circumspect.
“It’ssomething we can do at this late date … to at least take this off the record … it’s important to undo that,” she said.
Schmidt said it’s important to remind ourselves of violations of equal protection “in order to hold ourselves accountable in the present.”
Hingeley said he has “a lot of confidence in seeking the dismissal of this accusation for a number or reasons and they are all rooted in as much history as we can tell … and that’s what Jalane will testify to.”
