prejudice. Historian RAYFORDLOGANcharacterized
the brutal era of violence that flourished after Re-
construction as the American Dark Ages. Other
scholars, such as Robert Gibson, regard this bloody
era, which also included race riots and strength-
ened racist legislation and segregation, as the Black
Holocaust.
Records of lynchings in America reveal the
widespread nature of the violence. Between 1882
and 1968, murders occurred throughout the
South, as far north as Maine, and as far west as
California. According to the statistics collected by
the TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE, between 1882 and
1968, there were nearly 4,800 lynchings in Amer-
ica. This tally included nearly 1,300 murders of
whites and just under 3,500 murders of African
Americans. The states in which the most lynchings
occurred were primarily southern. Between 1882
and 1968, the Institute documented 581 in Missis-
sippi, 531 in Georgia, 493 in Texas, 391 in
Louisiana, 347 in Alabama, 284 in Arkansas, 282
in Florida, 251 in Tennessee, 205 in Kentucky, 160
in South Carolina, 122 in Missouri, and 100 in Vir-
ginia. Lynchings peaked in 1892, when some 230
individuals, 161 African Americans and 69 whites,
were murdered. Between 1910 and 1919 there
were 62 lynchings, and the racial violence contin-
ued through the Harlem Renaissance years of the
1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.
Lynching, often linked to the KUKLUXKLAN,
was motivated by bloodthirsty mobs and used to
maintain racial oppression. Victims of lynching in-
cluded pregnant women such as Mary Turner of
Georgia, who wanted to bring her husband’s lynch-
ers to justice, innocent men targeted by mobs bent
on avenging social slights or deaths of white men,
families of successful businessmen, and activists.
Charges of rape and assault were among the most
popular charges used to spur lynchings; another
was robbery. Lynching also was used to punish in-
dividuals who registered to vote, were involved in
interracial relationships, attempted to charge white
men with crimes, used obscenities, or refused to re-
linquish their property to whites. According to his-
torians such as Arthur Raper, many of the
murdered victims were wrongly accused.
The African-American press was the first ve-
hicle through which American lynching practices
were systematically recorded and protested. The
pioneering work of IDAB. WELLS-BARNETT, a
Memphis journalist and activist, thrust lynching
and its roots of racial hypocrisy and prejudice
into the forefront of American social debate and
racial protest. The Chicago Tribune,which Wells
read and cited in her work, was the first organi-
zation to tabulate lynching records. In the early
1890s Tuskegee Institute began its records, and
in 1912 the newly established NATIONALASSO-
CIATION FOR THEADVANCEMENT OFCOLORED
PEOPLE(NAACP) began to maintain records and
statistics. The NAACP established the Anti-
Lynching Committee, and its members regularly
publicized its findings in mainstream newspapers
such as THENEWYORKTIMESand The Atlanta
Constitution.The organization also relied heavily
on the courageous reportage of WALTERWHITE,
who served as assistant executive secretary from
1918 through 1931. White, a light-skinned,
blond, blue-eyed man of African descent, rou-
tinely infiltrated lynch mobs and Ku Klux Klan
meetings and obtained firsthand information
about lynchings and mob violence. He eventually
used his research in his prizewinning study of
lynching, ROPE ANDFAGGOT:A BIOGRAPHY OF
JUDGELYNCH(1929).
The most effective early published works on
lynching were pamphlets by the journalist Wells-
Barnett, one of the cofounders of the NAACP. Her
searing assessments of specific cases and evidence of
local and federal collusion with lynch mobs cat-
alyzed many to act and to protest the violence.
Wells-Barnett’s works included Lynch Law in Georgia
(1890) and The Red Record(1895), the first publica-
tion to provide documented statistical assessments
of lynching. In 1905 James Cutler’s Lynch-Law
chronicled the hideous methods of killing that in-
cluded maiming, torture, dismemberment, castra-
tion, disembowelment, hanging, and burning at the
stake. In 1919 the NAACP published Thirty Years of
Lynching in the United States, 1889–1918.Its study
was part of the organization’s systematic effort to
lobby for antilynching legislation. THECRISIS,the
organization’s publication, also included regular
commentary on the egregious practice.
The Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill was the first op-
portunity for the federal government to outlaw
lynching. The bill passed in the House of Represen-
tatives, but southern senators effectively blocked326 lynching