In front of a packed courtroom on Wednesday, a judge in Albemarle County, Virginia, overturned the indictment of a Black man who the court now believes was falsely accused of raping a white woman. John Henry James’s criminal record is now clear. But James wasn’t present in court to celebrate: he was lynched by an angry white mob 125 years earlier. On 11 July 1898, Julia Hotopp, a white woman, said she was returning home from the nearby town of Charlottesville after having her riding horse re-shod, when she was violently assaulted in a remote part of the road. But...