… er underclothing was torn, showing that the murderer had also attempted an outrage before the murder.” “On the right side of her neck was a terrible gash, large enough to insert a man’s hand. The Virginian’s description of her corpse was graphic: A crowd of people searched for the little girl and found her body about a half-mile away from her home. “Alarm turned to fear,” according to the Virginian’s account. But one of her brothers went looking for her and discovered she’d never made it to school. The story said that when Alice didn’t come back after school, her parents assumed she’d taken shelter from a storm that had blown through the area that afternoon. She walked west through a wild country landscape dotted with pine trees toward her school in Kempsville, then just a village of about 20 wooden houses. But in fact, the opposite was actually true.” Two murders in 1885Īccording to the Norfolk Virginian, Alice Powell left her house near what is now the corner of Holland Road and Rosemont Road at 7:40 a.m. “They were keeping the more violent and extremist elements from impacting race relations and the state.

“Virginia crafted a very specific narrative that they publicized internationally,” Newby-Alexander said. Virginia documented 84 of them within its borders.Ĭassandra Newby-Alexander, Endowed Professor of Virginia Black History and Culture at Norfolk State University, described how historically Virginia “managed the publicity” around racial violence to project a moderate, genteel image that wasn’t supported by facts. Lynching and its secretsĪ 2017 report by the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) shows more than 4,400 lynchings occurred between 18 nationwide. But the reports of the timeline of when this crime occurred and how authorities blamed Cherry for it do not match a review by the Virginia Mercury of official records in the Library of Virginia in Richmond and files at the Virginia Beach Municipal Center.Īll this comes to light at a time when Virginians are arguing over what to teach about the state’s history of systemic racism, as lawmakers in other states wonder if “hanging by a tree” could be added to official execution methods and amid shifting public sentiment about racism and racial history in America. They cast his lynching as an act of vigilante justice. Reports of this case have made Noah Cherry the chief suspect in Powell’s murder for more than 135 years. Alice Powell’s entry on the database says, “This child was murdered by a young black man who had a grudge against her father.” The account continues to surface in articles, in a book, and on a true crime podcast.

The two deaths became a nationwide story, reported by newspapers from Maine to California.

I, Eda by Howard R. Price