Lynching_of_Charlotte_Harris
Charlotte Harris was an African-American woman who was lynched by a white mob on March 6, 1878, near Harrisonburg, in Rockingham County, Virginia. Harris was hanged after being accused of burning a barn belonging to a wealthy white family. Her body was left to hang from a tree for two days in full view of the roadway. The lynching of Charlotte Harris is the only recorded lynching of a Black woman in Virginia's history. The lynching attracted national attention. While local newspapers characterized Harris as a "bad woman", a number of newspapers elsewhere denounced the crime as "disgusting" and an "atrocity" that reflected poorly on the Commonwealth of Virginia.[1]