Lynchings

The Oxford English Dictionary describes “lynch” as “to condemn and punish by lynch law. In early use, implying chiefly the infliction of punishment such as whipping, tarring and feathering, or the like; now only, to inflict sentence of death by lynch law.” Today, “lynching” refers to the practice of killing people by extrajudicial mob action. Lynching differs from ordinary murder or assault because it is a killing that is committed outside the boundaries of due process by a mob that enacts revenge or punishment for a perceived offense. Lynching derives its name from Colonel Charles Lynch, an 18th-century judge and Virginia landowner who had a habit of holding illegal trials of local lawbreakers in his front yard; Lynch would whip the accused while they were tied to a tree in his yard.

In American culture and history, lynching is recognized as a form of terror and, today, a hate crime. In the most literal sense, to lynch someone is to hang a body from a tree, and this symbol is still used as a form of threat, usually to African Americans. Still, it is the use of terror and threat as a form of hate that qualifies a mortally violent act as lynching. For example, the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, who was not hung from a tree is considered to have been a lynching because of the bigoted motives behind his murderers’ actions.

Lynchings seem to have been an American invention, though the act is not limited to the United States. In 1905, James E. Cutler wrote in Lynch Law that lynching is a criminal practice peculiar to the United States. Its use as a tool of terror, especially and traditionally toward African Americans and immigrants, necessitates its inclusion in any text discussing multiculturalism, as lynching has always played an integral role in the shaping of multicultural identity.