Charles Blair

Charles (Tom) Blair (Col ’87, Law ’90 CM) is a contributing author in the volume of essays Lynching in Virginia: Racial Terror and Its Legacy.  Growing up in Rockingham County, Blair, who is an attorney in private practice in Washington, D.C., developed an abiding interest in Civil War and Reconstruction-era history.  Although not as associated with lynching as other southern states, Virginia has a tragically extensive history with these horrific crimes. This important volume examines the more than one hundred people who were lynched in Virginia between 1866 and 1932. Its diverse set of contributors—including scholars, journalists, activists, and students—recover this wider history of lynching in Virginia, interrogate its legacy, and spotlight contemporary efforts to commemorate the victims of racial terror across the commonwealth. Together, their essays represent a small part of the growing effort to come to terms with the role Virginia played in perpetuating America’s national shame.