27 April 2021
Content note: The history of lynching is that of racialized violence, torture, and death. The topic can be deeply disturbing. I have tried to walk the line between showing the horrific nature of the practice while not gratuitously repeating the more gruesome details. However, if you consult the NAACP sources I list below, you will encounter detailed and horrifying descriptions of the incidents I reference.
Lynching is a form of vigilante or extra-judicial punishment, especially that inflicted on Black people in the American south. Lynching is often taken to be synonymous with execution, especially by hanging, but the term encompasses various forms of torture and means of execution, and in the early days did not necessarily include death. Lynching started as method for enforcing justice in regions of the United States where official judicial authority was weak, but within a few decades it had become a terrorist tactic to enforce white supremacy.
Prior to the Civil War, the majority of recorded lynching victims were white—either because enslaved people were too valuable to indiscriminately execute or because the killing of enslaved people went unrecorded. But the institution of slavery, as we shall see, was deeply implicated in the practice, as many of those whites who were lynched or threatened with lynching prior to the Civil War had abolitionist sentiments. Following the Civil War, and in the overall total, the majority of victims of lynching were Black.
The total number of people who were lynched in the United States varies with the source one consults. The fact that many lynchings were unrecorded, differences in the periods covered by the counts, and the definition of what constitutes a lynching lead to different numbers. But there is general agreement that from the late nineteenth century until the latter half of the twentieth around 5,000 people were lynched, most of them Black. Perhaps the most widely quoted statistic is from the Tuskegee Institute, which counted 4,742 lynchings between 1882 and 1968, 3,455 of whom were Black. More recently, sociologists Charles Seguin and David Rigby counted some 4,467 lynchings between 1883 and 1941, of which 3,265 were Black, 1,082 were white, and 120 were Mexican, Native American, or Asian. Seguin and Rigby also identified three distinct regimes of lynching: a frontier justice regime where judicial authority was weak; a white supremacist regime of lynchings of Black people, mostly in the south; and lynchings of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans along the southern border.
The word lynch originated in the regime of frontier justice. Specifically, it comes from the name of William Lynch (1742–1820), a magistrate in Pittsylvania County, Virginia, who in September 1780 instituted a vigilante regime against those deemed to be criminals. The practice quickly spread to the other newly independent southern states. The word lynch is sometimes ascribed to various other men with that name, but the evidence linking the word to William Lynch is unambiguous.
The earliest known record of the word is from an October 1811 diary entry by surveyor Andrew Ellicott that makes reference to William Lynch:
Captain Lynch just mentioned was the author of the Lynch laws so well-known and so frequently carried into effect some years ago in the southern states in violation of every principle of justice and jurisprudence. Mr. Lynch resided in Pittsylvania in the state of Virginia when he commenced legislator and carried his system into effect:–the detail I had from himself and is nearly as follows.—
The Lynch-men associated for the purpose of punishing crimes in a summary way without the tedious and technical forms of our courts of justice. Upon complaint being made to any member of the association of a crime being committed within the vicinity of their jurisdiction the person complained of was immediately pursued and taken if possible. If apprehended he was carried before some members of the association and examined:–if his answers were not satisfactory he was whipped till they were so. Those extorted answers generally involved others in the supposed crime who in their turn were punished in like manner.–These punishments were sometimes severe and not unfrequently inflicted upon the innocent thro spite or in consequence of answers extorted under the smarting of the whip....
Mr. Lynch informed me that he had never in any case given a vote for the punishment of death some however he acknowledged had been actually hanged tho not in the common way a horse in part became the executioner: the manner was this.—The person who it was supposed ought to suffer death was placed on a horse with his hands tied behind him and a rope about his neck which was fastened to the limb of a tree over his head. In this situation the person was left and when the horse in pursuit of food or any other cause moved from his position the unfortunate person was left suspended by the neck,–this was called aiding the civil authority.—It seems almost incredible that such proceedings should be had in a civilized country governed by known laws it may nevertheless be relied on. I should not have asserted it as a fact had it not been related to me by Mr. Lynch himself, and his neighbour Mr. Lay one of the original association together with several other Lynch-men as they are called. This self created judicial tribunal was first organised in the state of Virginia about the year 1776 from whence it extended southward as before observed.
But it is in the 1830s that the word starts appearing frequently. From William Gilmore Simms’s 1834 Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia, one of those early uses that mistakenly credits a different Lynch as the eponym:
"Who are the regulators?" inquired the youth.
“What, you live in Georgia, and never heard tell of the regulators? Well, that's queer, anyhow. But, the regulators are just, simply, you see, our own people; who, every now and then, turn out,—now one set and now another,—and whenever a chap like this same Jared Bunce goes about, living on everybody, and coming Yankee over everybody, they hunt him up and pay off old scores. Sometimes they let him off with a light hand, but then, you see, it altogether happens according to his behaviour. Sometimes they give him Lynch's Law, after old Nick Lynch, who invented it in Virginny, long before your time or mine. Sometimes they ride him upon a rail, and then duck him in the pond. It all depends, you see, upon the humour of the regulators."
It also appears in the widely read 1836 Col. Crockett’s Exploits and Adventures in Texas, a book that was originally credited as an autobiography, but is actually a pseudo-historical account of David Crockett’s life by Richard Penn Smith:
“Sights of this kind,” continued Thimblerig, “are by no means unfrequent. I once saw a gambler, a sort of friend of mine, by-the-way, detected cheating at faro, at a time when the bets were running pretty high. They flogged him almost to death, added the tar and feathers, and placed him aboard a dug-out, a sort of canoe, at twelve at night; and with no other instruments of navigation than a bottle of whisky and a paddle, set him adrift in the Mississippi. He has never been heard of since, and the presumption is, that he either died of his wounds or was run down in the night by a steamer. And this is what we call Lynching in Natchez."
These two accounts are of white people being lynched, but around this time the practice of lynching starts to become associated with maintaining the institution of slavery. For instance, in the 1836 novel The Clockmaker by Nova Scotian politician and humorist Thomas Chandler Halliburton, the character of Sam Slick claims not to support slavery, but says that abolitionists who venture into the southern states, while not deserving lynching—that’s too severe according to him—do deserve to be tortured for interfering in the affairs of others:
The truth is, said the Clockmaker, nothin’ raises my dander more, than to hear English folks and our Eastern citizens atalkin about this subject that they don't onderstand, and have nothin to do with. If such critters will go down South ameddlin’ with things that don't consarn ’em, they desarve what they catch. I don't mean to say I approve of lynchin’, because that's horrid; but when a feller gets himself kicked, or his nose pulled, and larns how the cowskin feels, I don't pity him one morsel. Our folks won't bear tamperin’ with, as you Colonists do; we won't stand no nonsense. The subject is jist a complete snarl; it's all tangled, and twisted, and knotted so, old Nick himself wouldn't onravel it. "What with private rights, public rights, and state rights, feelin’, expediency, and public safety, it’s a considerable of a tough subject. The truth is, I ain't master of it myself. I'm no book man, I never was to college, and my time has been mostly spent in the clock trade and tooth business, and all I know is jist a little I've picked up by the way. The tooth business, said I; what is that? do you mean to say you are a dentist? No, said he, laughing; the tooth business is pickin’ up experience. Whenever a feller is considerable ’cute with us, we say he has cut his eye teeth, he's tolerable sharp; and the study of this I call the tooth business. Now I ain't able to lay it all down what I think as plain as brother Josiah can, but I have an idea there's a good deal in name, and that slavery is a word that frightens more than it hurts. It's some o’ the branches or grafts of slavery that want cuttin’ off. Take away corporal punishment from the masters and give it to the law, forbid separatin’ families and the right to compel marriage and other connexions, and you leave slavery nothin’ more than sarvitude in name, and somethin’ quite as good in fact.
Every critter must work in this world, and a labourer is a slave; but the labourer only gets enough to live on from day to day, while the slave is tended in infancy, sickness, and old age, and has spare time enough given him to airn a good deal too. A married woman, if you come to that, is a slave, call her what you will wife, woman, angel, termegant, or devil, she’s a slave; and if she happens to get the upper hand, the husband is a slave, and if he don’t lead a worse life than any black n[——]r, when he's under petticoat government, then my name is not Sam Slick. I’m no advocate of slavery, squire, nor are any of our folks: it’s bad for the n[——]rs, worse for the masters, an la cuss to any country; but we have got it, and the question is, what are we to do with it? Let them answer that now,—I don’t pretend to be able to.
In her 1837 Society in America, English social theorist Harriet Martineau connected lynching to slavery, specifically to punishment of abolitionists. She writes of how abstract oratory does little to motivate Americans, but speeches that connect with their lived experience can do so:
Speak to them of what interests them, and they are moved with a word. Speak to those whose children are at school, of the progress and diffusion of knowledge, and they will hang upon the lips of the speaker. Speak to the unsophisticated among them of the case of the slave, and they are ready to brave Lynch-law on his behalf.
She mentions a notorious 1835 lynching of five gamblers in Vicksburg, Mississippi and places it next to the burning to death of a Black man:
The mobbing events of the last few years are celebrated; the abolition riots in New York and Boston; the burning of the Charleston Convent; the bank riots at Baltimore; the burning of the mails at Charleston; the hangings by Lynch-law at Vickesburgh; the burning alive of a man of colour at St. Louis; the subsequent proceedings there towards the students of Marion College; and the abolition riots at Cincinnati. Here is a fearful list!
She records an unsuccessful attempt to lynch abolitionist speakers in Boston in 1835:
They knew that a hand-bill had been circulated on the Exchange, and posted on the City Hall, and throughout the city, the day before, which declared that Thompson, the abolitionist, was to address them; and invited the citizens, under promise of pecuniary reward, to “snake Thompson out, and bring him to the tar-kettle before dark.” The ladies had been warned that they would be killed, “as sure as fate,” if they showed themselves on their own premises that day. [...] They began, as usual, with prayer; the mob shouting “Hurra! here comes Judge Lynch!"
And of abolitionist sentiment in Detroit, she writes:
The society of Detroit is very choice; and, as it has continued so since the old colonial days, through the territorial days, there is every reason to think that it will become, under its new dignities, a more and more desirable place of residence. Some of its inferior society is still very youthful; a gentleman, for instance, saying in the reading-room, in the hearing of one of our party, that, though it did not sound well at a distance, Lynching was the only way to treat Abolitionists: but the most enlightened society is, I believe, equal to any which is to be found in the United States.
In response, the Southern Literary Messenger, in an 1837 review of Martineau’s book, defended lynching as necessary, and not unique to the United States, as frontier justice where judicial authority was weak:
Every anecdote of cruelty which she hears is religiously written down, and honestly believed;—and even the jealous apprehensions of a jaundiced wife, who fears that her husband is no better than he should be, are chronicled with a sad solemnity, which is amusing, as the fruit of slavery. The outrages of the borderers—the frontier law of “regulation,” or “lynching,” which is common to new countries all over the world, are ascribed to slavery.
But with the Civil War and the end of Reconstruction in 1877, the practice of lynching shifted sharply, and Black people overwhelmingly became its victims, as white southerners discovered it was an effective terrorist tactic to maintain their social supremacy. It is not my intent here to produce a detailed history of lynchings in the United States, but here are portions of two 1918 accounts that describe the practice. They are by Walter White, an investigator for the NAACP. White, a Black man who could pass for white and move freely between white and Black communities in the south and who investigated some forty-one lynchings for the organization.
White wrote the following about the lynching of Jim McIllherron on 8 February 1918 in Estill Springs, Tennessee. On that date, McIllherron, a Black man, got into an argument with a number of white men that escalated to violence, and McIllherron shot and killed two of them:
Intense excitement prevailed in the town as news of the shooting spread. In this chaotic state of affairs, no one seemed to know what to do and threats of lynching began to be made. A few of the cooler heads pleaded that the crowd allow the sheriff to handle the entire affair. Knowing of the sheriff’s fear of the Negro, the crowd greeted this suggestion with a derisive shout, and cries of “Lynch the n[——]r” answered this plea. Plans were laid to form posses to catch McIlherron. Word was sent to Sheriff Rose at Winchester, upon receiving which he immediately left for Estill Springs.
Shouts of “Electrocution is too good for the damned n[——]r.” “Let’s burn the black ——” and others of the sort rose thick and fast. Led by its more radical members, the mob soon worked itself into a frenzy; a posse was formed and set out on the manhunt.
McIllherron was caught, tortured, and burned to death by the mob. A Black pastor, G. W. Lych, who had tried to help McIllherron escape was shot and killed as well.
White reported on a series of six lynchings in May 1918 in Brooks and Lowndes Counties in Georgia following the shooting of a white plantation owner:
The first of the mob’s victims to be captured was Will Head, a Negro of the community, who was caught on Friday morning, May 17, at 8:30, near Barney, Georgia; the second was Will Thompson, seized later on the same day. That night both were lynched near Troupeville, about five miles from Valdosta. Members of the mob stated to the investigator that over seven hundred bullets were fired into the bodies of the two men.
A summary of these two incidents giving more details is available at the NAACP website. And the complete articles by White, as well as descriptions of other lynchings, are available from the original sources, listed below, but be warned, the details are gruesome and very disturbing.
Nor is lynching a thing of the past. While it is fortunately far less frequent than it was, lynchings and threats of lynching still occur. The New York Times reported the following on 8 March 2021:
A Missouri man who prosecutors say threatened to lynch a Black congressman the day after the Jan. 6 siege at the U.S. Capitol and a Jewish congressman in 2019 was ordered by a federal judge on Monday to remain in custody.
[...]
Prosecutors said that Mr. Hubert had an extensive history of leveling threats at elected officials and political party employees, the most recent of which came on Jan. 7 when, they say, he left a phone message at Mr. Cleaver’s Independence, Mo., office that contained a racial slur and expletives. Mr. Cleaver, who is from Kansas City, Mo., is Black.
According to a transcript of the message that was detailed by prosecutors, Mr. Hubert said, “How about a noose … around his neck?”
It was not the first time, prosecutors said, that Mr. Hubert had communicated such a lynching threat.
In a May 6, 2019, phone call to Mr. Cohen’s office in Washington, Mr. Hubert told a staff member that he had “a noose with the congressman’s name on it” and planned to “put a noose around his neck and drag him behind his pickup truck,” according to a transcript released by prosecutors.
Mr. Cohen, who is from Memphis, is Jewish.
While incidents of lynching have substantially decreased in number, we are still living with the threat and the legacy of the practice.
Some contend that the word is a reference to an incident in Galway, Ireland in 1493. According to local lore, the mayor of Galway, James Lynch FitzStephen, hanged his own son for murder in that year. Whether or not the incident even took place is a matter of debate, but what is not in question is that this incident is not the origin of the word. There is no evidence linking the word lynch to this Galway incident.
(See picnic for a discussion of the alleged association of picnics with lynching.)
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