Study - The American Lynch Mob - Not What You "Think" -

This is an examination of Lynching in America...

Lynching -excerpts-

By their very nature, lynch mobs were incapable of weighing niceties of proof and exculpation. But there was another equally important reason for them to disregard those niceties: that the mob acted on the local community's intimate knowledge of the individual. If he was known locally to be vicious or a no-good, that was justification enough for brushing aside "technicalities" when there seemed sufficient reason to think he had committed an outrage.

During the 22-year span between 1882 and 1903, inclusive, a total of 3,337 people were lynched.

As to race, the following comparisons apply:

In the South, 567 whites, 1985 blacks, and 33 others;

in the West, 523 whites, 34 blacks, and 75 others;

in the Northeast, 79 whites, 41 blacks, and no others.

In all, there were 1,169 whites, 2,060 blacks, and 108 others put to death.

It may surprise us that of the total who were lynched, 63 were women, of whom 40 were black and 23 white.


Dr. John E. Osborne--a future governor of Wyoming--participated in the vigilante hanging of the ferocious bandit, George (Big Nose) Parrott. The next day Dr. Osborne 'skinned...George and cut away the top of the skull, in order to remove the brain. The skin was tanned and made into a medical instrument bag, razor strops, a pair of lady's shoes, and a tobacco pouch. The shoes were displayed in the Rawlins National Bank for years.'"

Those were rough and ready times, and the fact that the shoes were accepted objects of curiosity for so long shows that an absence of empathy was part of the community ethos.

These figures are eloquent testimony that serious crime was the primary provocation for lynching.

The post-World War II civil rights movement had nothing to do with the demise of lynching, which had virtually disappeared by the mid-1930s.

1. The discussions above of whether lynching was unique to American history and of whether lynching was "racist" bear directly on the question of perspective.

2. In terms of the numbers of lives taken, lynching was minor when compared to many of the enormities committed in almost any century.

3. Part of the revulsion comes from the supposition, which is presumptively justified in light of the absence of legal proof of the provoking crimes.

4. Another reason for revulsion is that lynching flies so apparently in the face of established legal process.

Somehow we forget about the victims of a crime. When a legal system pulls the process away from the victims, it inevitably depersonalizes it; and we see how easy it becomes, through facile legal ideology, to leave the victims' cry for justice frozen on their lips.

[link to dwightmurphey-collectedwritings.info]