Lynching in the Jim Crow South more prevalent than previously thought

The Equal Justice Initiative just finished a meticulous historical examination of lynching in the Jim Crow South, and the results are grim. They find that from 1877-1950, nearly 4,000 Americans were murdered by white supremacist mobs, at least 700 more than previous studies:

Often the entire white community, including women and children, would attend a pre-planned lynching, making them into "celebratory acts of racial control and domination." Whites often cut souvenirs from the corpse, or collected photographs and postcards of the murder.

The report calls this "terror lynching," because it was a foundational part of the politics of Jim Crow. It was often not for blacks accused of a crime, but for those who had committed social transgressions (bumping into a white woman, for example) or for community leaders who resisted mistreatment. Behind the surface of segregation was the threat of violent death for anyone who resisted.

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Read the report here.