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How Bad was Lynching in the USA?
The media portrays lynching as happening frequently to blacks in the last 1800s to early 1900s, and the blacks were innocent of crimes charged against them and instead were victims of White racism.
How common was lynching?
For some context: in 2021, there were at least 8488 black homicide victims (a rate of around 20.6 black homicide victims per 100,000 blacks). [1]
According to the Tuskegee Institute, there were 4743 people lynched between 1882 and 1968. [2]
There were 3446 blacks lynched (72.7% of total; 39.6 / year on average).
There were 1297 Whites lynched (27.3% of total; 14.9 / year on average).
In the worst two decades (1882-1901) 149.4 people were killed per year (92.8 of whom were Black (62%)).
With an average population of 7.7 million blacks [3], 1.2 blacks were lynched / 100,000 blacks / year for the 1882-1901 period.
This 1.2 is a lot less than the modern murder rate of 20.6.
Two facts jump out immediately:
White people were lynched too.
Very few people were lynched per year.
White people were lynched too, because lynching was something that happened to criminals. Murder was the most common crime those lynched were accused of. Rape and cattle theft were also common accusations. [2]
The lynching of criminals happened when:
the townsfolk felt the criminals might get away without being charged for their crimes, or
the crime happened in a remote town and the crime would require much time and effort to happen through normal justice system (e.g. cattle theft), or
the criminal had committed a heinous crime and the townsfolk wanted revenge, or
the townsfolk felt the criminal had been let off with too light a sentence (e.g. Leo Frank).
For instance: in 1915, at Marietta, Georgia: Leo Frank, a jewish man who had been found guilty of raping and murdering White 13 year old girl, was lynched. He had been initially sentenced to death, but through connections to the governor his sentence had been reduced which led to his lynching. Note that a black man who tried to help him cover up the crime (and was initially accused of the crime) was not lynched.
Sometimes lynchings happened to innocent people (the modern justice system also sometimes targets innocent people). However, on multiple occasions (where an innocent party was lynched) the perpetrator was sentenced to death. [4]
Additionally, blacks also formed lynch gangs, mostly to lynch other blacks, but sometimes to lynch Whites.
For instance: in 1908, at Pine Level, Johnston County, North Carolina: "it is recorded that an unnamed Negro entertainer was lynched by Negroes for putting on a poor show." Notice, that the lynching here was for insufficient provocation, which when done by Whites is taken as evidence of their racial motivation. [4]
Answer: Lynching wasn't that bad.
Sources:
[1] FBI Crime Data Explorer 2021 statistics cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend
[2] Tuskegee Institute. Lynchings: By State and Race, 1882-1968 archive.tuskegee.edu/repository/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Lynchings-Stats-Year-Dates-Causes.pdf
[3] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_racial_and_ethnic_demographics_of_the_United_States#Historical_data_for_all_races_and_for_Hispanic_origin_(1610%E2%80%932020)
[4] Murphey, D. D. (1995). Lynching : history and analysis : a legal studies monograph. Washington, D.C.: Council for Social and Economic Studies. p. 22-23 ia601604.us.archive.org/21/items/LynchingHistoryAndAnalysis/Ly.pdf