Lynching in The United States - Social Characteristics

Social Characteristics

One motive for lynchings, particularly in the South, was the enforcement of social conventions – punishing perceived violations of customs, later institutionalized as Jim Crow laws, mandating segregation of whites and blacks.

Financial gain and the ability to establish political and economic control provided another motive. For example, after the lynching of an African-American farmer or an immigrant merchant, the victim's property would often become available to whites. In much of the Deep South, lynchings peaked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as white racists turned to terrorism to dissuade blacks from voting. In the Mississippi Delta, lynchings of blacks increased beginning in the late 19th century, as white planters tried to control former slaves who had become landowners or sharecroppers. Lynchings were more frequent at the end of the year, when accounts had to be settled.

Lynchings would also occur in frontier areas where legal recourse was distant. In the West, cattle barons took the law into their own hands by hanging those whom they perceived as cattle and horse thieves.

African-American journalist and anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells wrote in the 1890s that black lynching victims were accused of rape or attempted rape only about one-third of the time. The most prevalent accusation was murder or attempted murder, followed by a list of infractions that included verbal and physical aggression, spirited business competition and independence of mind. White lynch mobs formed to restore the perceived social order. Lynch mob "policing" usually led to murder of the victims by white mobs. Law-enforcement authorities sometimes participated directly or held suspects in jail until a mob formed to carry out the murder.