User:Dubyavee/sandbox

The practice of lynching is a crime where one or more persons is killed by a group of people, usually defined as 3 or more, often by means of hanging but not strictly limited to this method. The crime is outside, or extra-legal, of the legal system and the perpetrators try to justify their actions as being "just" or the righteous punishment of those who are killed.

Red Record of Lynching 1889-1921

Lynching in the United States mostly occurred in the southern states, though it happened throughout most of the nation during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The upper south states are antebellum slave states that either did not pass an ordinance of secession during the Civil War, or seceded after the firing on Fort Sumter. These states also had legalized school segregation at the time of the Supreme Court decision Brown v Board of Education in 1954 which negated the "separate but equal" justification for segregation.

States in red had legal school segregation in 1954

These states also had in place a number of laws deemed "Jim Crow" which restricted the rights of African-Americans as full citizens.

The upper southern states generally had numerically lower lynching incidents than the "deep south", but the motivations and backgrounds are similar. Having a much lower African-American population also meant that lynching rates were often as great as the deep south states or even greater, as in the case of Arkansas or Kentucky. The people usually targeted were African-Americans, though victims were sometimes of other races and nationalities.

Arkansas

The earliest recorded lynchings in the state occurred in 1836 with the deaths of two African-American men. Although general histories have concluded that the lynching of African-Americans was most prominent after the Civil War, but a recent study has shown that more slaves were lynched than whites previous to the war. In the post-war era groups of white vigilantes suchas the KKK and the "whitecappers" used violence and intimidation to chase out African-Americans and to keep them from voting.

West Virginia

African-American Lynchings 1877-1950 in the Upper South

State	Avg. Afr.-Am. Population 1880-1950	Deaths	Avg./Year 1877-1950	Avg./Per Afr.-Am.
Arkansas	398670	492	6.6486	0.0000167
Delaware	32390	1	0.0135	0.0000004
Kentucky	245464	168	2.2702	0.0000092
Maryland	262745	28	0.3783	0.0000014
Missouri	194722	60	0.8108	0.0000042
North Carolina	765664	123	1.6621	0.0000021
Tennessee	469488	233	3.1486	0.0000067
Virginia	666839	84	1.1351	0.0000017
West Virginia	75013	35	0.4729	0.0000063