08/26/2026
https://www.facebook.com/100029234185332/posts/1816383319346123/?mibextid=9drbnH&s=yWDuG2&fs=e
Jill Collen Jefferson is the founder of JULIAN, a civil rights organization based in Mississippi. She is also one of the most important builders working in America right now, and most people have never heard her name.
In 2026, JULIAN published The Crimson Record, a report documenting more than 70 modern-day lynchings across seven southern states between 2000 and 2025. Inspired by Ida B. Wells’ historic documentation of lynchings in the 19th century, the report reveals recurring patterns of violence, systemic neglect, and law enforcement misconduct that echo the racial terror of earlier eras.
While Demartravion Reed’s family demanded answers, Kyle Bassinga’s community grieved in silence, and Tory Medley’s family fought for transparency, Jill Collen Jefferson was building the infrastructure to document every single case, not as activism, as a record.
“The moment a case is ruled a su***de, it’s no longer investigated as a potential homicide,” Jefferson said. “Lynching has never disappeared. It has adapted, hidden behind silence and indifference. Today, as in the past, it survives in the shadows. If we are to end this brutality and secure justice for the victims, their families, and the communities left to carry the pain, we must confront it openly and speak its name without fear.”
This is what Ida B. Wells understood in the 19th century. You cannot build accountability for what you refuse to name. You cannot demand justice for what the system refuses to investigate. You cannot protect the living if you allow the dead to be erased.
Jill Collen Jefferson built JULIAN because truth without structure remains unseen. She saw the truth, built the structure around it, and named what the system refused to name.The Crimson Record is not a report, it is infrastructure. The kind that holds the weight of 70 families who were told their loved ones chose to die and were given no path to challenge that determination.
This is what unmuted leadership looks like. Not waiting for the system to investigate, but building the record that makes ignorance impossible.
We think. We be.
