[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 67 (Monday, April 19, 2021)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E417]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  HONORING THE MEMORY OF JOSEPH McCOY

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. DONALD S. BEYER, JR.

                              of virginia

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, April 19, 2021

  Mr. BEYER. Madam Speaker, I rise today in memory of Joseph McCoy.
  On the morning of April 23, 1897, an African American named Joseph 
McCoy, just a teenager, was lynched in Alexandria, Virginia. On April 
22, Joseph McCoy was arrested without a warrant. That evening and into 
the early morning of April 23 a white mob made two attempts to break 
into the police station where he was being held. In the second attempt 
the mob forcibly took him from his jail cell, shot him, bludgeoned him, 
and hanged him from the lamppost on the southeast corner of Cameron and 
Lee Streets. McCoy was buried in a pauper's grave at Penny Hill 
Cemetery. Joseph McCoy was the first documented lynching victim in 
Alexandria.
  The lynching of Joseph McCoy is only one of 86 documented lynchings 
committed in Virginia between 1880 and 1930. These acts of premeditated 
violence were deliberate attempts by whites to terrorize and control 
black populations across the state.
  On April 23, the City of Alexandria's Equal Justice Initiative 
Community Remembrance Project will hold a remembrance event for Joseph 
McCoy. It will feature the unveiling of a small in-person marker and a 
wider commemoration via an In Memoriam web page.
  It is incumbent on all of us, particularly those born into privilege, 
to remember this shameful episode of our history and others like it. In 
doing so, we are better able to see the continuous chain of racially 
motivated violence against black Americans that spans our Nation's 
history. We can truly honor the memory of Joseph McCoy along with the 
countless number of named and unnamed victims of racial violence by 
seeking justice for all Americans and working to build a more inclusive 
society.

                          ____________________