The Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala., released a report on the history of lynchings in the United States. The authors of the report compiled an inventory of 3,959 victims of racial terror lynchings" in 12 Southern states from 1877 to 1950. Next comes the process of selecting lynching sites where the organization plans to erect markers and memorials, which will involve significant fund-raising, negotiations with distrustful landowners and, almost undoubtedly, intense controversy. The process is intended, [Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan] Stevenson said, to force people to reckon with the narrative through-line of the country's vicious racial history, rather than thinking of that history in a short-range, piecemeal way. "Lynching and the terror era shaped the geography, politics, economics and social characteristics of being black in America during the 20th century," Mr. Stevenson said, arguing that many participants in the great migration from the South should be thought of as refugees fleeing terrorism rather than people simply seeking work. The lynching report is part of a longer project Mr. Stevenson began several years ago. One phase involved the erection of historical markers about the extensive slave markets in Montgomery. The city and state governments were not welcoming of the markers, despite the abundance of Civil War and civil rights movement memorials in Montgomery, but Mr. Stevenson is planning to do the same thing elsewhere.