Arthur Jordan and Elvira Corder were young and unafraid, but their love was doomed. He was Black, she was white and this was Virginia in 1880. When Elvira became pregnant, the couple fled Fauquier County to live in Maryland. But her father found them and recruited neighbors to help kidnap them. Four nights later, a mob dragged Arthur from the county jail in Warrenton and lynched him. Elvira, taken to a hotel in Williamsport, Maryland, was never heard from again. Stories of lynching are all too common in the postbellum South, but this one tells a unique tale of a couple who were willing to sacrifice everything to be together—and did. Author Jim Hall tells a classic tale of forbidden love, one of hope crushed by hate. 

Jim Hall is an award-winning journalist and popular speaker on lynching in Virginia. His book The Last Lynching in Northern Virginia: Seeking Truth at Rattlesnake Mountain was published by The History Press in 2016. His newest book, Condemned for Love in Old Virginia: The Lynching of Arthur Jordan, was published by History Press in July 2023. He has a master’s degree from Virginia Commonwealth University and is a former adjunct instructor at the University of Mary Washington. A native of Virginia, he is retired and lives now in Fredericksburg.

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