In the late 19th century, lynchings were the only latest form of racial terrorism against black Americans after white plantation owners had used various forms of violence against the enslaved.
According to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), tension had begun brewing throughout the late 19th century in the U.S., and this was mostly felt in the south, where people blamed their financial woes on the newly freed slaves that lived among them.
Whites resorted to lynching as a form of retaliation towards the freed blacks. What mostly triggered these lynchings were claims of petty crime, rape, or any alleged s3xual contact between black men and white women.
Whites started lynching because they felt it was crucial to protect white women.
From 1882-1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States. Of these people that were lynched, 3,446 were black. The blacks lynched accounted for 72.7% of the people lynched, according to the NAACP, which was quick to add that not all of the lynchings were ever recorded.
Out of the 4,743 people lynched only 1,297 white people were lynched, that is, 27.3%. These whites were lynched for domestic crimes, helping the black or being against lynching.
“A typical lynching would involve criminal accusations, often dubious, against a black American, an arrest, and the assembly of a “lynch mob” intent on subverting the normal constitutional judicial process,” a report by The Guardian said.
It added that victims were seized and tortured, with many being hung from a tree and set on fire. Some were dismembered and their pieces of flesh and bone were taken by mob members as souvenirs.
Below are the top 5 American states that had the highest lynchings from 1882-1968:
Texas
Texas stands third among the states, after Mississippi and Georgia, in the total number of lynching victims. Of the 493 victims in Texas between 1882 and 1968, 352 were black and 141 were white.
A report by the Texas State Historical Association said that between 1889 and 1942, charges of murder or attempted murder precipitated at least 40 percent of the mobs while rape or attempted rape accounted for 26 percent.
African Americans were more likely to be lynched for rape than were members of other groups. Meanwhile, war-generated tensions led to the greatest mass lynching in the history of the state, the Great Hanging at Gainesville, when vigilantes hanged 41 suspected Unionists in October 1862.
In 1916, Jesse Washington, a black teenage farmhand was lynched in the county seat of Waco, Texas, in what became a well-known example of racially motivated lynching.
Washington was convicted of raping and murdering the wife of his white employer in rural Robinson, Texas.
Louisiana
The state, between 1882 and 1968, recorded 391 total lynchings with 335 of the victims being black. Most of these murders occurred in South Louisiana, where mob violence was more prevalent.
These lynchings were a manifestation of the system of racial hierarchy that underlay South Louisiana’s sugar economy, writes Michael J. Pfeifer. In June 1896, Walter Starks, an African American was killed by white lynchers after being accused of robbing and attempting to murder a wife of a plantation owner in St. Mary Parish.
Alabama
347 lynchings were recorded in Alabama between 1882 and 1968 with 299 of the victims being black and 50 being white. Black men were lynched for “standing around”, for “annoying white girls”, for failing to call a policeman “mister”, among others.
In 1940, Jesse Thornton, a 26-year-old black man was lynched for failing to address a police officer as “mister” in Luverne, Alabama.
Records show that some of the Alabama counties that had the highest rates of lynchings across the United States were Jefferson County (about 30 lynchings) and Dallas County (25 lynchings).
Mississippi
Lynchings occurred more in Mississippi than in any other state. During the 100 years after the Civil War, almost one in every ten lynchings in the U.S. took place in Mississippi, according to Julius E. Thompson in his book “Lynchings in Mississippi: A History, 1865-1965”.
Until the 1940′s, hanging, or the gallows, was the method of execution in Mississippi. State lawmakers subsequently replaced it with the electric chair.
From 1882 to 1968, there were 581 lynchings in Mississippi, the highest number of any state, according to the NAACP. Just like other Southern states, these murders were carried out largely by white mobs against black victims.
The most well-known lynching in Mississippi was that of Emmett Till. The 14-year-old was killed in 1955, following a rumour that he flirted with a white woman.
The senseless killing set the growing Civil Rights Movement into motion and a rallying cry was heard nationwide. Earlier, in October 1942, Charlie Lang and Ernest Green, two 14-year-old boys, were also lynched in Shubuta, Mississippi, after a white girl accused them of attempted rape.
Georgia
Georgia recorded 531 lynchings during the same period (1882 to 1968), with 92 of them targeting black people. John Moody, a farmhand who, in 1901, decided to leave his white employer in Bryan County to work for another white farmer was killed by a white mob upon orders from his first employer.
There was the case of Jesse Stater, who was accused of writing an “insolent letter to a white woman” and was lynched by a mob in November 1917.
Another brutal murder occurred in 1918 when 21-year-old Mary Turner, a young pregnant black mother of two who was lynched by a white mob only a day after the lynching of her husband, Hazel Turner.
Turner was killed for protesting against the lynching of her husband who was killed during a raid by the white mob following the murder of a white plantation owner in Brooks County by one of his black workers.
