80 Court Square
Harrisonburg, Virginia 22802
Directions from ohn Wesley United Methodist Church to site 23:
- Continue on Sterling St to E Market St
- Make a right onto E Market St
- You will come to Court Square and the driving is one way around the Courthouse
- Make a right onto Main St
- Make a left and then another left as you drive around Court Square. Look for parking.
For African Americans in Rockingham County, the courthouse served as a physical symbol of a legal structure that was meant to keep them enslaved. Prior to the civil war, Virginia law upheld the institution of slavery and sought to make it difficult for those of African heritage to reside in the state. Even after emancipation was granted in 1863, Virginia's legal system was designed to exclude blacks from attaining the same rights and protections as those granted to the state's white citizens.
Virginia slave law underwent multiple transformations between the arrival of the first slave ship in 1919 and the onset of the 19th century. As the 1700s approached, Virginia law became increasingly more restrictive in regards to slave status, and law codes sought to eliminate black freedmen by creating a structure that made blackness synonymous with being enslaved. Laws became even tighter at the onset of the 1800s against freedmen. In 1803 the Virginia State Legislature passed a law requiring all freedmen in the state to register and acquire papers to carry with them. In 1806 a subsequent law was passed that mandated all newly freed enslaved persons leave the state within one year or risk being sold back into slavery.
In 2020, a Historic Highway Marker was added to the grounds at the Harrisonburg Courthouse to commemorate the lunching of Charlotte Harris. It reads: "Charlotte Harris Lunched, 6 March 1878. About a dozen disguised peopel took Charltte Harris from the custody of jailers in eastern Rockingham County on the night of 6 March 1878 and hanged her from a tree approximately 13 miles southeast of here. This is the only documented lunching of an African American woman in Virginia, and it received nationwide attention. A grand jury that met here failed to identify any of the lynchers. Harris had been accused of inciting a young African American man to burn the barn of a white farmer. This man was later acquitted on all charges. More than 4,000 lynchings took place in the United States between, 1877 and 1950; more than 100 people, primarily African American men, were lynched in Virginia."
Virginia slave law underwent multiple transformations between the arrival of the first slave ship in 1919 and the onset of the 19th century. As the 1700s approached, Virginia law became increasingly more restrictive in regards to slave status, and law codes sought to eliminate black freedmen by creating a structure that made blackness synonymous with being enslaved. Laws became even tighter at the onset of the 1800s against freedmen. In 1803 the Virginia State Legislature passed a law requiring all freedmen in the state to register and acquire papers to carry with them. In 1806 a subsequent law was passed that mandated all newly freed enslaved persons leave the state within one year or risk being sold back into slavery.
In 2020, a Historic Highway Marker was added to the grounds at the Harrisonburg Courthouse to commemorate the lunching of Charlotte Harris. It reads: "Charlotte Harris Lunched, 6 March 1878. About a dozen disguised peopel took Charltte Harris from the custody of jailers in eastern Rockingham County on the night of 6 March 1878 and hanged her from a tree approximately 13 miles southeast of here. This is the only documented lunching of an African American woman in Virginia, and it received nationwide attention. A grand jury that met here failed to identify any of the lynchers. Harris had been accused of inciting a young African American man to burn the barn of a white farmer. This man was later acquitted on all charges. More than 4,000 lynchings took place in the United States between, 1877 and 1950; more than 100 people, primarily African American men, were lynched in Virginia."