In much of my research so far, I have focused on racial tension and hate groups in Atlanta. From this research, I have gained a few questions regarding these features in Atlanta’s history. How many hate crimes or lynchings were committed by members of hate groups? How do murders of Black people versus white people compare and change over time? How did the incarceration of Black people change over time? It would be interesting to study the activity of hate groups in Atlanta and how active they were in crime, but this question is too large to delve into right now. Comparing murder/assault victim’s races could shed light on whether Black people were disproportionately the victims of violence than white people, but this would create a large data set that I likely would not be able to put together within a short time frame. The final question regarding incarceration statistics could be manageable and still offer insight into race relations in Atlanta. While this data set may have already been created, this question provides a good starting place for finding more questions.
U.S. Bureau of Criminal Identification. Report of the Special Agent in Charge of the Bureau of Criminal Identification: Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1922. By A.J. Renoe. Leavenworth, Kansas: U.S. Penitentiary Press, 1923. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hl29yu&view=1up&seq=3 (Accessed October 18, 2022).
This source is a report showing the amount of prisoners have been photographed, fingerprinted, and put into an index card system. This report mainly focuses on how prisons are cataloging their prisoners, but it does break down the prison population that has been cataloged by race. The author is A.J. Renoe, who signed off his report with “Chief of Bureau.” He wrote the report and sent it to the Attorney General to show the progress in cataloging prisoners. This source may not be useful for me on its own, but it does provide some information into the prison population of the early 1900s.
