Lynching

Lynching Documented

In 1882, Tuskegee University began keeping records of lynchings in the United States. Tuskegee's first director of records, sociologist Monroe Work, and subsequent generations of Tuskegee librarians and students maintained newspaper and magazine reports of lynchings. This record, published annually from 1882 to 1962, became an important contributor to public attention to this phenomenon. From 1882 to 1885, the number of Whites lynched outnumbered the number of Blacks lynched. After the year 1886, the number of Blacks lynched always exceeded the number of Whites lynched. Through 1944, Tuskegee recorded 3,417 lynchings of Blacks, meaning that, on average, a Black person was murdered by a White mob nearly once a week, every week, during this time period. Although lynchings declined after 1944, it was not until 1952 that a year passed without a single recorded lynching. It is important to note that these records indicate only the number of documented lynchings and that many lynchings occurred without public record.

Reconstruction and Mob Violence

In the Reconstruction era South, lynching of Blacks was used, especially by the Ku Klux Klan, in an effort to reverse the social changes brought on by federal occupation. With the development of the Black Codes, and later the Jim Crow laws, a rise in African American lynchings in the South occurred. Lynching was a means to intimidate, degrade, and control Black people and to soothe the tensions of Whites throughout the southern and border states from Reconstruction to the mid-20th century.

Lynching was an illegal act because it denied a suspect due process under the law. Thus, the information that due process generated (including lawyers' arguments, sworn testimony, and evidence) was not available to assist in understanding the instigating deed and in weighing guilt or innocence. In many cases, if a person was charged with a particular crime, the details of the actual incident would become obscured or falsified. If an individual was being detained by criminal justice authorities, an incensed vigilante mob would form and demand that law officials release the prisoner to the crowd. The law officials either easily acquiesced or surrendered the prisoner through force. Once the mob had obtained the prisoner, a crowd would gather—sometimes up to several thousand people—and the act of the lynching would occur. Many scholars note that lynchings were highly ritualized spectacles.

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