Lynching

A lynching is the murder of an accused person, often preceded by torture, by three or more killers (99% of whom were never punished or even charged with a crime) who acted under the pretext of service to justice without allowing the accused person to undergo a trial. Lynchings were a form of social control whereby a victim's family, friends, and other community members were forced to adopt a public code of silence about the lynching or fear for their own lives. The identity of lynchers was almost always known, and local police often facilitated the act, and local press often praised it.

In the U.S., lynching was carried on frequently for decades after the Civil War, and was particularly applied to people of color in the Southern states where slavery had existed.

As an example, the U.S. state of Mississippi had 581 confirmed lynchings between the years of 1882 and 1940, with 47 white victims and 204 African American victims. There exists an online catalog of the names/dates/locations of confirmed lynching victims in the state. During those years (1882-1940), annually an average of nearly one white person was lynched and about four black people were lynched. It is safe to say that blacks, and sometimes white people who befriended blacks, lived in fear of becoming a target themselves.

By contrast, the U.S. state of New Jersey only ever had two confirmed lynchings.

Lynchings by U.S. state

Click on a column header to sort the table by that item.

No	Name	White	Black	Total
1	Alabama	48	299	347
2	Alaska	0	0	0
3	Arizona	31	0	31
4	Arkansas	58	226	284
5	California	41	2	43
6	Colorado	65	3	68
7	Connecticut	0	0	0
8	Delaware	0	1	1
9	Florida	25	257	282
10	Georgia	39	492	531
11	Hawaii	0	0	0
12	Idaho	20	0	20
13	Illinois	15	19	34
14	Indiana	33	14	47
15	Iowa	17	2	19
16	Kansas	35	19	54
17	Kentucky	63	142	205
18	Louisiana	56	335	391
19	Maine	1	0	1
20	Maryland	2	27	29
21	Massachussetts	0	0	0
22	Michigan	7	1	8
23	Minnesota	5	4	9
24	Mississippi	42	539	581
25	[[Missouri]]	53	69	122
26	Montana	82	2	84
27	Nebraska	52	5	57
28	Nevada	6	0	6
29	New Hampshire	0	0	0
30	New Jersey	1	1	2
31	New Mexico	33	3	36
32	New York	1	1	2
33	North Carolina	15	86	101
34	North Dakota	13	3	16
35	Ohio	10	16	26
36	Oklahoma	82	40	122
37	Oregon	20	1	21
38	Pennsylvania	2	6	8
39	Rhode Island	0	0	0
40	South Carolina	4	156	160
41	South Dakota	27	0	27
42	Tennessee	47	204	251
43	Texas	141	352	493
44	Utah	6	2	8
45	Vermont	1	0	1
46	Virginia	17	83	100
47	Washington	25	1	26
48	West Virginia	20	28	48
49	Wisconsin	6	0	6
50	Wyoming	30	5	35
51	TOTAL	1297	3446	4743

NOTE: Contents of the above table is from this template.