Lynching

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A lynching is the murder of an accused person, often preceded by torture, by three or more killers (99% of whom are never punished or even charged with a crime) in public, who act under a pretext of serving justice without allowing the accused person a trial. It is murder by a mob. During and after a lynching, the victim's family, friends, and other community members are forced to adopt a public code of silence about it or fear for their own lives., while the identity of lynchers is almost always known, local police often facilitate the act, and local press may praise it.

Lynching has occurred all through history and in most parts of the world but has seldom been more prevalent than it was during the U.S. Jim Crow era in its southern states. The vast majority of all U.S. lynchings (more than 3/4) occurred in the U.S. southern states, which had a large proportion of African American residents who had been freed from slavery at the end of the American Civil War, and also in states and territories such as Kentucky and Missouri where slavery had in danger of becoming established before that war. Mississippi had the most (581) confirmed lynchings between the years of 1882 and 1940, with 42 "white" victims and 539 African American victims. People of color in the U.S. South, and sometimes others who befriended them, lived in fear of being lynched. In contrast, some states far removed from the South had no reported lynchings at all.

It is worth noting that, even after the practice of lynching died down in U.S. states where it had been frequent, racism continued to be enforced by a portion of the population by threatening the livelihood or social acceptance of anyone who fraternized across races. In some cases, death threats were still frequently issued (and violence such as bombings) continued via the Ku Klux Klan and other secretive white supremacist, hate-mongering organizations. As of 2024, the situation still may exist in pockets throughout the U.S. South.

Although it was not called "lynching", mob killings similar in nature to lynching are said to have occurred many times during the 18th century French Revolution and the 20th-century communist revolutions in both Russia and China, ignored or even sanctioned by the newly installed governments.

U.S. lynchings by state[edit]

NOTE: A drawback of the Tuskegee University classification scheme for lynching is that the numbers shown as "white" (especially outside the former U.S. slave states) likely included other ethnic groups such as Native Americans, Mexicans, Chinese, or other immigrant nationalities.^[1]

Notes[edit]