New Report Finds More African-Americans Lynched in U.S. Than Previously Believed
A report released on this day by the Equal Justice Initiative found that far more African-Americans were lynched in the U.S in the between 1877 and 1950 than was previously believed. A total of 3,959 African-Americans were lynched in those years, 700 more than had been reported in earlier studies.
The report covered the twelve most active lynching states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. Many victims were lynched even though they had not been accused of a crime. [NOTE: many analysts define a “lynching” as the killing by a mob of someone already in custody for an alleged crime.]
The Dyer anti-lynching bill, that would make lynching a federal crime was introduced in the House of Representatives on April 1, 1918. The first anti-lynching conference in the U.S. occurred in New York City on May 5, 1919. Congress never passed an anti-lynching law.
Read the important first report: Equal Justice Initiative, Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror (2015)
Read the new report: Equal Justice Initiative, Reconstruction in America:Racial Violence After the Civil War (2020)
Go to the Equal Justice Initiative web site: http://www.eji.org/
See the horrors of lynching: Dora Apel and Shawn Smith, Lynching Photographs (2007)