Lynching in America LYNCHING IN AMERICA Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror Third Edition Equal Justice Initiative Equal Justice Initiative 122 Commerce Street Montgomery, Alabama 36104 334.269.1803 www.eji.org © 2017 by Equal Justice Initiative. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, modified, or distributed in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means without express prior written permission of Equal Justice Initiative. Contents Introduction 3 Secession and Emancipation, 1861-1865 6 Presidential Reconstruction 8 Progressive Reconstruction 10 White Backlash: The Ku Klux Klan and the Reign of Terror 12 Wavering Support: Federal Indifference and Legal Opposition 16 Back To Brutality: Restoring Racial Hierarchy Through Terror and Violence 18 After Reconstruction: Unequal, Again 22 Convict Leasing 23 Jim Crow 25 Lynching in America: From “Popular Justice” to Racial Terror 27 Characteristics of the Lynching Era 29 Lynchings Based on Fear of Interracial Sex 30 Lynchings Based on Minor Social Transgressions 31 Lynchings Based on Allegations of Crime 32 Public Spectacle Lynchings 33 Lynchings Targeting the Entire African American Community 38 Lynchings of Black People Resisting Mistreatment, 1915-1940 38 Lynching in the South, 1877-1950 39 Lynching Outside the South, 1877-1950 44 Enabling an Era of Lynching: Retreat, Resistance, and Refuge 48 Turning a Blind Eye to Lynching: Northern and Federal Complicity 48 Opposition To Lynching 51 Confronting Lynching 57 Violent Intimidation and Opposition to Equality 57 Men and boys pose beneath the body of Lige Daniels, a black man, shortly after he was lynched on August 3, 1920, in Center, Texas. Racially-Biased Criminal Justice and Mass Criminalization 60 James Allen, ed., et al., Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America (Santa Fe, NM: Twin Palms Publishers, 2000), 117-118. Trauma and the Legacy of Lynching 65 From the Civil War until World War II, millions of African The Need for Monuments and Memorials 66 Americans were terrorized and traumatized by the lynching of Significance for the African American Community 68 thousands of black men, women, and children. Traumatic Legacy for the White Community 70 This report documents this history and contends that America’s Importance for the Nation 73 legacy of racial terror must be more fully addressed if racial justice is to be achieved. Conclusion 76 Notes 77 1 History, despite its wrenching pain, Introduction Cannot be unlived, but if faced During the period between the Civil War and World In America, there is a legacy of racial inequality War II, thousands of African Americans were shaped by the enslavement of millions of black peo- With courage, need not be lived again. lynched in the United States. Lynchings were violent ple. The era of slavery was followed by decades of and public acts of torture that traumatized black terrorism and racial subordination most dramatically Maya Angelou, On the Pulse of Morning people throughout the country and were largely tol- evidenced by lynching. The civil rights movement of erated by state and federal officials. These lynchings the 1950s and 1960s challenged the legality of many were terrorism. “Terror lynchings” peaked between of the most racist practices and structures that sus- 1880 and 1940 and claimed the lives of African tained racial subordination but the movement was American men, women, and children who were not followed by a continued commitment to truth forced to endure the fear, humiliation, and barbarity and reconciliation. Consequently, this legacy of of this widespread phenomenon unaided. racial inequality has persisted, leaving us vulnerable to a range of problems that continue to reveal racial Lynching profoundly impacted race relations in this disparities and injustice. EJI believes it is essential country and shaped the geographic, political, social, that we begin to discuss our history of racial injustice and economic conditions of African Americans in more soberly and to understand the implications of ways that are still evident today. Terror lynchings fu- our past in addressing the challenges of the present. eled the mass migration of millions of black people from the South into urban ghettos in the North and Lynching in America is the second in a series of re- West throughout the first half of the twentieth cen- ports that examines the trajectory of American his- tury. Lynching created a fearful environment where tory from slavery to mass incarceration. In 2013, EJI racial subordination and segregation was main- published Slavery in America, which documents the tained with limited resistance for decades. Most slavery era and its continuing legacy, and erected critically, lynching reinforced a legacy of racial in- three public markers in Montgomery, Alabama, to equality that has never been adequately addressed change the visual landscape of a city and state that in America. The administration of criminal justice in has romanticized the mid-nineteenth century and particular is tangled with the history of lynching in ignored the devastation and horror created by profound and important ways that continue to con- racialized slavery and the slave trade. taminate the integrity and fairness of the justice sys- tem. Over the past six years, EJI staff have spent thou- sands of hours researching and documenting terror This report begins a necessary conversation to con- lynchings in the twelve most active lynching states front the injustice, inequality, anguish, and suffering in America: that racial terror and violence created. The history of terror lynching complicates contemporary issues Alabama Mississippi of race, punishment, crime, and justice. Mass incar- Arkansas North Carolina ceration, excessive penal punishment, dispropor- Florida South Carolina tionate sentencing of racial minorities, and police Georgia Tennessee abuse of people of color reveal problems in Ameri- Kentucky Texas can society that were framed in the terror era. The Louisiana Virginia narrative of racial difference that lynching drama- tized continues to haunt us. Avoiding honest con- versation about this history has undermined our ability to build a nation where racial justice can be achieved. 2 (Library of Congress/Getty Images) 3 We have more recently supplemented our research Tuskegee, Alabama. These sources are widely Racial terror lynching was a tool used to (1) lynchings that resulted from a wildly distorted by documenting terror lynchings in other states, and viewed as the most comprehensive collection of re- enforce Jim Crow laws and racial segrega- fear of interracial sex; found these acts of violence were most common in search data on the subject of lynching in America. tion—a tactic for maintaining racial con- (2) lynchings in response to casual social transgres- eight states: Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, EJI conducted extensive analysis of these data as trol by victimizing the entire African American sions; Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, and West Virginia. well as supplemental research and investigation of 3 (3) lynchings based on allegations of serious violent community, not merely punishment of an al- lynchings in each of the subject states. We reviewed crime; leged perpetrator for a crime. Our research con- We distinguish racial terror lynchings—the subject local newspapers, historical archives, and court (4) public spectacle lynchings; firms that many victims of terror lynchings were of this report—from hangings and mob violence that records; conducted interviews with local historians, (5) lynchings that escalated into large-scale violence murdered without being accused of any crime; they followed some criminal trial process or that were survivors, and victims’ descendants; and exhaus- targeting the entire African American commu- were killed for minor social transgressions or for de- committed against non-minorities without the tively examined contemporaneously published re- nity; and manding basic rights and fair treatment. threat of terror. Those deaths were a crude form of ports in African American newspapers. EJI has (6) lynchings of sharecroppers, ministers, and com- punishment that did not have the features of terror documented 4084 racial terror lynchings in twelve munity leaders who resisted mistreatment, lynchings directed at racial minorities who were Southern states between the end of Reconstruction Our conversations with survivors of lynch- which were most common between 1915 and being threatened and menaced in multiple ways. in 1877 and 1950, which is at least 800 more lynch- ings show that terror lynching played a key 1940. ings in these states than previously reported. EJI has role in the forced migration of millions of We also distinguish terror lynchings from racial vio- also documented more than 300 racial terror lynch- 4black Americans out of the South. Thousands of The decline of lynching in the studied lence and hate crimes that were prosecuted as crim- ings in other states during this time period. people fled to the North and West out of fear of states relied heavily on the increased use inal acts. Although criminal prosecution for hate being lynched. Parents and spouses sent away loved of capital punishment imposed by court ones who suddenly found themselves at risk of crimes was rare during the period we examine, such Some states and counties were particu- order following an often accelerated trial. That prosecutions ameliorated those acts of violence and larly terrifying places for African Ameri- being lynched for a