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A graph of lynchings in the US by victim race and year [1] The body of George Meadows, lynched near the Pratt Mines in Jefferson County, Alabama, on January 15, 1889 Bodies of three African American men lynched in Habersham County, Georgia, on May 17, 1892 Six African American men lynched in Lee County, Georgia, on January 20, 1916 (retouched photo due to material deterioration) Lynching of ...
Sociologist Arthur F. Raper investigated one hundred lynchings during the 1930s and estimated that approximately one-third of the victims were falsely accused. [4] [5] On a per capita basis, lynchings were also common in California and the Old West, especially of Latinos, although they represented less than 10% of the national total.
Lynchings took place in the United States both before and after the American Civil War, most commonly in Southern states and Western frontier settlements and most frequently in the late 19th century. They were often performed by self-appointed commissions, mobs , or vigilantes as a form of punishment for presumed criminal offenses. [ 20 ]
A colorized postcard of the lynching of Virgil Jones, Robert Jones, Thomas Jones, and Joseph Riley on July 31, 1908, in Russellville, Kentucky. A lynching postcard is a postcard bearing the photograph of a lynching—a vigilante murder usually motivated by racial hatred—intended to be distributed, collected, or kept as a souvenir.
Lynchings in the U.S. reached their height from the 1890s to the 1920s, and they primarily victimized ethnic minorities. Most of the lynchings occurred in the American South, as the majority of African Americans lived there, but racially motivated lynchings also occurred in the Midwest and border states.
[21] [22] Lynching came to be associated with the Deep South; 73 percent of lynchings took place in the Southern United States. [ 23 ] [ 24 ] Between 1882 and 1903, 125 black-on-black lynchings were recorded in 10 southern states, as were four cases of whites being lynched by black people. [ 25 ]
[14] [15] More than 4075 documented lynchings of black people took place between 1877 and 1950, concentrated in 12 Southern states. In addition, the EJI has published supplementary information about lynchings in several states outside the South. The monument is the first major work in the nation to name and honor these victims. [16]
A misconception about lynching was that it was confined solely to southern practice. However, lynching took place all across the United States in almost every state. Lynchings are acts of extrajudicial killings dating back to the 1830s which marked the pre–Civil War South. The main act of lynching included hanging from trees.