Our creative idea was to bring EJI's research to life online, showing America's history of racial terror lynchings with interactive maps and narrative content. We wanted to visually illustrate the scope of racial terror lynchings, but also go beyond data visualization and tell the stories of the victims—or those who are still suffering the effects of this history to this day.

An interactive map presents an opportunity to interact with and more completely understand the data, while engaging with specific stories. Audio photo essays featuring the descendents of lynching victims reveal the ongoing impact of this history today, while a short documentary follows the Dedman-Miles family as they return South for the first time since their grandfather’s lynching 100 years ago.

We then set out to integrate the content into cultural moments and connect with key influencers to help expose as many people to this important, timely message as possible.

We transformed EJI's report into an interactive web experience, integrated its core messaging into high-profile cultural moments, and partnered with educators to develop online student curriculum.

Major campaign elements launched in June 2017 when the "Lynching in America" site went live. A launch event in New York showcased the site's powerful content publicly for the first time.

Social posts continued through the summer, and in July we opened the "Legacy of Lynching" exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, featuring prominent black artists Sanford Biggers and Glenn Ligon. A Google Doodle honoring the 100th anniversary of the Silent Parade spread our message on the Google homepage. An appearance on “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah” followed in August, and in September, Andra Day performed “Strange Fruit” at the Global Citizen Festival A music video was also released, and the song was performed on national TV at the NAACP Awards in January 2018.

Our goals were to reach 15 million users and drive 1 million users to the site. Beyond hard numbers, we wanted to seed the project within culture and connect with key influencers who could help spread the word. We blew those benchmarks away.

Our video content was viewed 47.5 million times, including 3 million views of Anthony Ray Hinton’s story, 2.8 million views the “Strange Fruit” music video, and 1.2 million views of Bryan Stevenson’s interview on “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah”. We received 121 million potential impressions across Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and Facebook in the first week alone.

The site was visited 1.3 million times. Over 120 influencers with a combined followership of 60 million shared our content, and over 102,000 people attended an event or a museum where our work was on display.

The United States as we know it today is a direct result of our shared history. African American communities around the country were shaped during the Great Migration, when millions fled the South not simply to pursue economic opportunities, but fearing for their lives.

Furthermore, the controversy over Confederate monuments—the majority of which were erected at the same time, and in the same places, as these lynchings were taking place— reached a fever pitch as this project was launched. The project exposed America’s painful history of racial injustice for all to see, challenging us all to confront it head on.

Information about America’s history of racial oppression is missing in our collective memory, and this lack of accessible information has effectively enabled many Americans to ignore this country’s history of racial injustice. Our brief was to introduce millions of people to both this history and EJI’s broader message of truth and reconciliation.

We identified three key groups to target: those who EJI is already connected to, “informed allies” (those who are aware of this history, but might not be engaging with EJI), and “uninformed allies” (those empathetic to the cause, but not already engaged in the issue). We then identified key influencers who would connect with the content and be willing to become involved, as well as cultural moments and institutions— like the Brooklyn Museum, the Global Citizen Festival and “The Daily Show with Trevor Noah”—where we could seed our work.

Equal Justice Initiative, an Alabama-based civil rights nonprofit, believes that in order to become a more just nation, we must face America’s history of racial violence. EJI spent years researching racial terror lynchings in America, documenting in a report their findings that over 4,000 African Americans were lynched in the United States. We collaborated with EJI to bring their unprecedented research on the history of lynching in America to a wide audience.

Our objectives were to expand the message of Equal Justice Initiative and the “Lynching in America” report to new audiences. To do this, we helped transform the report into an interactive experience, accessible to millions, integrated its core messaging into high-profile cultural moments, and developed classroom curriculum.