what is lynching

Lynching is an extrajudicial killing by a group, often used to characterize informal public executions by a mob in order to punish an alleged criminal offense. Lynchings were violent public acts that white people used to terrorize and control Black people in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly in the South. Lynchings typically evoke images of Black men and women hanging from trees, but they involved other extreme brutality, such as torture, mutilation, decapitation, and desecration. Lynchings were often performed by self-appointed commissions, mobs, or vigilantes as a form of punishment for presumed criminal offenses. Lynchings were often public spectacles attended by the white community in celebration of white supremacy. Photos of lynchings were often sold as souvenir postcards. Lynchings were covered in local newspapers with headlines spelling out the horrific details. Photos of victims, with exultant white observers posed next to them, were taken for distribution in newspapers or on postcards. Lynchings were frequently committed with the most flagrant public display. Lynchings were violent and public events that traumatized Black people throughout the country and were largely tolerated by state and federal officials. Lynchings of African Americans were terrorism, a widely supported phenomenon used to enforce racial subordination and segregation. Lynchings were a tool of racial terror meant to spread fear among Blacks and served the broad social purpose of maintaining white supremacy in the economic, social, and political spheres. Lynchings were not confined to the South, and racial terror lynchings were documented in 12 Southern states between 1877 and 1950.