Read complete books and articles on: Lynching

Lynching - unlawfully hanging or otherwise killing a person by mob action. The term is believed to have been derived from Col. Charles Lynch, a Virginia planter who made a practice of punishing Loyalists during the American Revolution. However, it is most commonly applied to racist violence in the post–Civil War American South.

Lynching was common among North American pioneers on the

Lynching was common among North American pioneers on the frontier, where legal institutions were not yet established. Lesser crimes might be punished by exile, while crimes that seemed to them capital, such as rape, horse stealing, and cattle rustling, were punished by lynching. Pioneers formed vigilance committees to repress crime (see vigilantes). When legal institutions had been duly established, such vigilance committees normally tended to disappear. Measures by such committees had the intrinsic danger of resorting to violence and hasty injustice, and posed a tangible threat to the basis of the law.

Between 1882, when reliable data was first collected, and 1968, when the crime had largely disappeared, there were at least 4,730 lynchings in the United States, including some 3,440 black men and women. Most of these were in the post-Reconstruction South between 1882 and 1944, where southern whites used lynching and other terror tactics to intimidate blacks into political, social, and economic submission. Contrary to a widespread misconception, only about a quarter of lynch victims were accused of rape or attempted rape. Most blacks were lynched for outspokenness or other presumed offenses against whites, or in the aftermath of race riots. In many cases lynchings were not spontaneous mob violence but involved a degree of planning and law-enforcement cooperation. Racially motivated lynchings, which often involved the mutilation and immolation of the victim, might be witnessed by an entire local community as a diverting spectacle.

State and local governments in the South did little to curtail lynchings; various laws against mob violence were seldom enforced. Three times (1922, 1937, 1940) antilynching legislation passed the House of Representatives, only to be defeated in the Senate. Although the term has fallen into disuse since the civil-rights movement of the 1960s, similar practices still occur, often classified today as "bias crimes."

See R. L. Zangrando, The NAACP Crusade Against Lynching, 1909–1950 (1980); P. Dray, At the Hands of Persons Unknown (2002).

Show Excerpt Only

14 of the Best Books and Articles on: Lynching

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

Exorcising Blackness: Historical and Literary Lynching and Burning Rituals » Read Now
by Trudier Harris. 244 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
2.

Under Sentence of Death: Lynching in the South » Read Now
by W. Fitzhugh Brundage. 330 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

"This important contribution to southern history and the history of U.S. race relations promises to inform, challenge, and enlighten readers". Patricia Sullivan, Author of Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era
Explores the legacies lynching left to southern society and the black...
Read More

"This important contribution to southern history and the history of U.S. race relations promises to inform, challenge, and enlighten readers". Patricia Sullivan, Author of Days of Hope: Race and Democracy in the New Deal Era
Explores the legacies lynching left to southern society and the black struggle for social justice
From the assembled work of fifteen leading scholars emerges a complex and provocative portrait of lynching in the American South. With subjects ranging in time from the late antebellum period to the early twentieth century, and in place from the border states to the Deep South, this collection of essays provides a rich comparative context in which to study the troubling history of lynching.
Covering a broad spectrum of methodologies, these essays further expand the study of lynching by exploring such topics as same-race lynchings, black resistance to white violence, and the political motivations for lynching.
Addressing both the history and the legacy of lynching, the book raises important questions about Southern history, race relations, and the nature of American violence. Though focused on events in the South, these essays speak to patterns of violence, injustice, and racism that have plagued the entire nation.
Show less
3.

Lethal Punishment: Lynchings and Legal Executions in the South » Read Now
by Margaret Vandiver. 285 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library
4.

Legacies of Lynching: Racial Violence and Memory » Read Now
by Jonathan Markovitz. 229 pgs.

Collections: History, Psychology, Entire Library
5.

Blood Justice: The Lynching of Mack Charles Parker » Read Now
by Howard Smead. 272 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

Based on previously unreleased FBI and Justice Department documents, extensive interviews with many of the surviving principals involved in the case, and a variety of newspaper accounts, Smead meticulously reconstructs the full story of one of the last lynchings in America, detailing a grim...
Read More

Based on previously unreleased FBI and Justice Department documents, extensive interviews with many of the surviving principals involved in the case, and a variety of newspaper accounts, Smead meticulously reconstructs the full story of one of the last lynchings in America, detailing a grim, dramatic, but nearly forgotten episode from the Civil Rights era. In 1959, a white mob in Poplarville, Mississippi abducted a young black man named Mack Charles Parker--recently charged with the rape of a white woman--from his jail cell, beat him, carried him across state lines, finally shot him, and left his body in the Pearl River. A massive FBI investigation ensued, and two grand juries met to investigate the lynching, yet no arrests were ever made. Smead presents a vivid picture of a small Southern town gripped by racism and distrust of federal authority, and describes the travesty of justice that followed in the wake of the lynching. Ultimately revealing more than an account of a single lynching, he offers what he calls "a glimpse at the tidal forces at work in the South on the eve of the civil rights revolution."
Show less
6.

Revolt against Chivalry: Jessie Daniel Ames and the Women's Campaign against Lynching » Read Now
by Jacquelyn Dowd Hall. 378 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library
7.

I Will Wear No Chain! A Social History of African-American Males (Chap. 7 "Black Males, Race Riots, and the Scourge of Lynching") » Read Now
by Christopher B. Booker. 262 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

This volume traces the social history of African American men from the days of slavery to the present, focusing on their achievements, their changing image, and their role in American society. The author places the contemporary issue of Black men's disproportionate involvement with criminal justice...
Read More

This volume traces the social history of African American men from the days of slavery to the present, focusing on their achievements, their changing image, and their role in American society. The author places the contemporary issue of Black men's disproportionate involvement with criminal justice within its social and historical context, while analyzing the most significant movements aiming to improve the status of Blacks in our society. The book's main thesis is that an ever-changing, yet ever-present process of criminalization has entrapped Black men throughout history, thus creating a major barrier to their collective development. The topics discussed include the role of Blacks in the Civil War, Booker T. Washington, the Civil Rights movement, and the Million Man March.
Show less
8.

The Political Context of Competition: Lynching and Urban Racial Violence, 1882-1914, in Social Forces » Read Now
by Susan Olzak. 27 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...The Political Context of Competition: Lynching and Urban Racial Violence, 1882-1914...shaped regional and temporal variation in lynchings and urban violence against blacks...
9.

White Violence and Black Response: From Reconstruction to Montgomery (Chap. Two "Lynching and Black Perspectives") » Read Now
by Herbert Shapiro. 565 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...Imposition of White Rule 5 2. Lynching and Black Perspectives 30...includes the barbarous institution of lynching and urban race riots that have often...victory is also...
10.

Black Concentration and Lynchings in the South: Testing Blalock's Power-Threat Hypothesis, in Social Forces » Read Now
by Jay Corzine, James Creech, Lin Corzine. 23 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...Black Concentration and Lynchings in the South: Testing Blalocks Power-Threat...is limited to the South. Employing lynching rates of blacks in southern counties...the...
11.

Black Lynchings: The Power Threat Hypothesis Revisited, in Social Forces » Read Now
by Stewart E. Tolnay, E. M. Beck, James L. Massey. 19 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library

...Black Lynchings: The Power Threat Hypothesis Revisited...theory driven" efforts to explain the lynching phenomenon has employed Blalocks "power...power threat...
12.

The Anatomy of Lynching, in Journal of the History of Sexuality » Read Now
by Robyn Wiegman. 23 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library
13.

Managing White Supremacy: Race, Politics, and Citizenship in Jim Crow Virginia (Chap. 6 "A Melancholy Distinction: Virginia's Response to Lynching") » Read Now
by J. Douglas Smith. 407 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

Tracing the erosion of white elite paternalism in Jim Crow Virginia, Douglas Smith reveals a surprising fluidity in southern racial politics in the decades between World War I and the Supreme Court's 1954 "Brown v. Board of Education decision.
Smith draws on official records, private correspondence...
Read More

Tracing the erosion of white elite paternalism in Jim Crow Virginia, Douglas Smith reveals a surprising fluidity in southern racial politics in the decades between World War I and the Supreme Court's 1954 "Brown v. Board of Education decision.
Smith draws on official records, private correspondence, and letters to newspapers from otherwise anonymous Virginians to capture a wide and varied range of black and white voices. African Americans emerge as central characters in the narrative, as Smith chronicles their efforts to obtain access to public schools and libraries, protection under the law, and the equitable distribution of municipal resources.
This acceleration of black resistance to white supremacy in the years before World War II precipitated a crisis of confidence among white Virginians, who, despite their overwhelming electoral dominance, felt increasingly insecure about their ability to manage the color line on their own terms. Exploring the everyday power struggles that accompanied the erosion of white authority in the political, economic, and educational arenas, Smith uncovers the seeds of white Virginians' resistance to civil rights activism in the second half of the twentieth century.
Show less
14.

The Lynching of Persons of Mexican Origin or Descent in the United States, 1848 to 1928, in Journal of Social History » Read Now
by William D. Carrigan. 29 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library