The publication is reproduced in full below:
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.
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SOURCE: Congressional Record Vol. 167, No. 67
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