2026 SESSION
ENROLLED
HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. 87
Designating April 13, in 2026 and in each succeeding year, as a Day of Remembrance for Victims of Lynching in Virginia.
Agreed to by the House of Delegates, February 11, 2026
Agreed to by the Senate, March 3, 2026
WHEREAS, throughout America's history of slavery, segregation, and inequality, thousands of Black Americans were lynched across America, particularly throughout the southern United States, to perpetuate racial inequality and white supremacy and to terrorize Black communities; and
WHEREAS, during Reconstruction, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution were ratified, abolishing slavery, granting citizenship to any person born or naturalized in the United States, and guaranteeing the rights to due process of law and equal protection under the law and the right to vote for Black men; and
WHEREAS, in outright defiance of the Reconstruction Amendments, people across the nation acted outside of the law, deliberately, violently, and brutally, against Black citizens in retribution for alleged or invented crimes and faced few or no consequences; and
WHEREAS, the Equal Justice Initiative has documented more than 4,000 lynchings that took place throughout the South between 1877 and 1950, over 80 of which took place in Virginia; other scholarship documents more than 100 lynchings in Virginia; and
WHEREAS, Black men, women, and children lived in fear that their lives and the lives of loved ones could end violently at any time and in any place; and