Lynchings in the United States

Lynching is the practice of murder by extrajudicial action. Lynchings in the United States rose in number after the American Civil War in the late 1800s, following the emancipation of slaves; they declined after 1930 but were recorded into the 1960s. Lynchings most frequently targeted African American men and women in the South. They were most frequent from 1890 to the 1920s, with a peak in 1892. Starting with large mob actions attended by hundreds or thousands of watchers, lynchings in the 20th century began to be conducted secretly by small groups of people. Lynchings were also common in the Old West, where Native Americans, Mexican Americans, and Chinese were the primary victims.

After the Reconstruction era, most of the South was dominated politically by conservative Democrats. Lynchings enforced white supremacy and intimidated blacks by racial terrorism. The rate of lynchings in the South has been strongly associated with economic strains, although the causal nature of this link is unclear. Low cotton prices, inflation, and economic stress are associated with higher frequencies of lynching.

The granting of U.S. Constitutional rights to freedmen after the American Civil War was resisted by many white Southerners. Some blamed the freedmen for their own wartime hardships, and post-war economic losses, and loss of social and political privilege. During Reconstruction, freedmen and whites working for civil rights were attacked and sometimes lynched. Black voting was suppressed by violence. White Democrats regained control of state legislatures in 1876, and a national compromise resulted in the removal of federal troops from the South in 1877. In later decades, violence continued around elections until blacks were disenfranchised by the states across the South from 1890 to 1908.

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