The Montgomery County School District was a public school district with its headquarters in Winona, Mississippi .
69-688: The district served rural areas of Montgomery County , Mississippi ( USA ), including the towns of Duck Hill and Kilmichael . Small pieces of the Winona city limits extended into the district. Effective July 1, 2018 the Montgomery County and Winona Separate School District consolidated into the Winona-Montgomery Consolidated School District . The consolidation was mandated by the Mississippi state government. At one time
138-960: A Race and Within Our Gates , African American–directed films that presented more positive images of blacks. While the frequency of lynching dropped in the 1930s, there was a spike in 1930 during the Great Depression. For example, in North Texas and southern Oklahoma alone, four people were lynched in separate incidents in less than a month. A spike in lynchings occurred after World War II , as tensions arose after veterans returned home. White people tried to re-impose white supremacy over returning Black veterans. The last documented mass lynching occurred in Walton County, Georgia , in 1946, when local white landowners killed two war veterans and their wives. Soviet media frequently covered racial discrimination in
207-605: A few to thousands. Lynching steadily increased after the Civil War, peaking in 1892. Lynchings remained common into the early 1900s, accelerating with the emergence of the Second Ku Klux Klan . Lynchings declined considerably by the time of the Great Depression . The 1955 lynching of Emmett Till , a 14-year-old African-American boy, galvanized the civil rights movement and marked the last classical lynching (as recorded by
276-482: A household in the county was $ 25,270, and the median income for a family was $ 31,602. Males had a median income of $ 26,590 versus $ 17,639 for females. The per capita income for the county was $ 14,040. About 21.90% of families and 24.30% of the population were below the poverty line , including 34.80% of those under age 18 and 25.40% of those age 65 or over. 33°30′N 89°37′W / 33.50°N 89.61°W / 33.50; -89.61 Lynching in
345-480: A recognized lynching, a definition which became generally accepted by other compilers of the era: 1. There must be legal evidence that a person was killed. 2. That person must have met death illegally. 3. A group of three or more persons must have participated in the killing. 4. The group must have acted under the pretext of service to justice, race, or tradition. Statistics for lynchings have traditionally come from three sources primarily, none of which covered
414-502: A relation to the concentration of Blacks in parts of the Deep South: where the Black population was concentrated, lynching rates were higher. Such areas also had a particular mix of socioeconomic conditions, with a high dependence on cotton cultivation. Henry Smith , an African American handyman accused of murdering a policeman's daughter, was a noted lynching victim because of the ferocity of
483-479: A settler in Montgomery County, Tennessee, who founded the city of Clarksville, Tennessee , in the same county. The Big Black River passes through the southern part of the county, flowing southwest to its confluence with the Mississippi River south of Vicksburg. According to the U.S. Census Bureau , the county has a total area of 408 square miles (1,060 km ), of which 407 square miles (1,050 km )
552-523: A total of 4,733 persons had died by lynching since 1882. The last lynching recorded by the Tuskegee Institute was that of Emmett Till in 1955. In the 65 years leading up to 1947, at least one lynching was reported every year. The period from 1882 to 1901 saw the height of lynchings, with an average of over 150 each year. 1892 saw the most number of lynchings in a year: 231 or 3.25 per one million people. After 1924 cases steadily declined, with less than 30
621-426: A variety of other ways: being shot, burned alive, thrown off a bridge, dragged behind a car, etc. Occasionally, the body parts of the victims were removed and sold as souvenirs. Lynchings were not always fatal; "mock" lynchings, which involved putting a rope around the neck of someone who was suspected of concealing information, was sometimes used to compel people to make "confessions". Lynch mobs varied in size from just
690-527: A white woman and were jailed pending a grand jury hearing. A physician's subsequent examination of the woman found no evidence of rape or assault. In 1903, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported a new, popular make-believe children's game: "The Game of Lynching". "Imaginary mayor gives order not to harm imaginary mob, and an imaginary hanging follows. Fire contributes realistic touch." "It has crowded out baseball", and if it continues, "may deprive of some of its prestige
759-522: A white woman. The mob responded by putting the noose around the officer's neck as a way of scaring him, and completed killing the other man. Although at the inquest the officer identified eight people who had participated in the lynching, including the former chief of police, the jury determined that the murder had been carried out "by person or persons unknown". In Duluth, Minnesota , on June 15, 1920, three young African American traveling circus workers were lynched after having been accused of having raped
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#1733121803757828-752: A year. The decreasing rate of yearly lynchings was faster outside the South and for white victims of lynching. Lynching became more of a Southern phenomenon and a racial one that overwhelmingly affected Black victims. There were measurable variations in lynching rates between and within states. According to the Tuskegee Institute, 38% of victims of lynching were accused of murder, 16% of rape, 7% for attempted rape, 6% were accused of felonious assault, 7% for theft, 2% for insult to white people, and 24% were accused of miscellaneous offenses or no offense. In 1940, sociologist Arthur F. Raper investigated one hundred lynchings after 1929 and estimated that approximately one-third of
897-739: Is land and 0.9 square miles (2.3 km ) (0.2%) is water. It is the fourth-smallest county in Mississippi by total area. This area was occupied in historic times by the Choctaw people . Their ancestors had inhabited the area for thousands of years. Under the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the United States forced most of the Native Americans west of the Mississippi River in order to open their lands to settlement by European Americans. Much of
966-410: The 2020 United States census , there were 9,822 people, 4,539 households, and 3,064 families residing in the county. As of the 2010 United States Census , there were 10,925 people living in the county. 53.0% were White , 45.5% Black or African American , 0.4% Asian , 0.1% Native American , 0.5% of some other race and 0.5% of two or more races . 0.9% were Hispanic or Latino (of any race). As of
1035-658: The American Civil War , southern Whites struggled to maintain their dominance. Secret vigilante and terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) instigated extrajudicial assaults and killings in order to discourage freedmen from voting, working, and getting educated. They also sometimes attacked Northerners, teachers, and agents of the Freedmen's Bureau . The magnitude of the extralegal violence which occurred during election campaigns reached epidemic proportions, leading
1104-507: The NAACP and other civil rights groups. On November 25, 1915, a group of men led by William J. Simmons burned a cross on top of Stone Mountain , inaugurating the revival of the Ku Klux Klan. The event was attended by 15 charter members and a few aging former members of the original Klan. The Klan and their use of lynching was supported by some public officials like John Trotwood Moore ,
1173-492: The State Librarian and Archivist of Tennessee from 1919 to 1929. Moore "became one of the South's more strident advocates of lynching". 1919 was one of the worst years for lynching with at least seventy-six people killed in mob or vigilante related violence. Of these, more than eleven African American veterans who had served in the recently completed war were lynched in that year . White supremacist violence culminated in
1242-621: The Tuskegee Institute recorded 1,297 lynchings of white people and 3,446 lynchings of Black people. Lynchings were concentrated in the Cotton Belt ( Mississippi , Georgia , Alabama , Texas , and Louisiana ). However, lynchings of Mexicans were under-counted in the Tuskegee Institute's records, and some of the largest mass lynchings in American history were the Chinese massacre of 1871 and
1311-458: The Tuskegee Institute ). The overwhelming majority of lynching perpetrators never faced justice. White supremacy and all-white juries ensured that perpetrators, even if tried, would not be convicted. Campaigns against lynching gained momentum in the early 20th century, championed by groups such as the NAACP . Some 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress between the end of the Civil War and
1380-452: The U.S. state of Mississippi . As of the 2020 census , the population was 9,822. Its county seat is Winona . The county is said to be named in honor either of Richard Montgomery , an American Revolutionary War general killed in 1775 while attempting to capture Quebec City , Canada , or for Montgomery County, Tennessee , from which an early settler came. In the latter case, it would have been indirectly named after John Montgomery ,
1449-495: The census of 2000, there were 12,189 people, 4,690 households, and 3,367 families living in the county. The population density was 30 people per square mile (12 people/km ). There were 5,402 housing units at an average density of 13 per square mile (5.0/km ). The racial makeup of the county was 54.25% White , 44.95% Black or African American , 0.08% Native American , 0.25% Asian , 0.02% Pacific Islander , 0.07% from other races , and 0.37% from two or more races. 0.85% of
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#17331218037571518-615: The lynching of eleven Italian immigrants in 1891 in New Orleans . During the California Gold Rush , White resentment towards more successful Mexican and Chilean miners resulted in the lynching of at least 160 Mexicans between 1848 and 1860. Members of mobs that participated in lynchings often took photographs of what they had done to their victims in order to spread awareness and fear of their power. Souvenir taking, such as pieces of rope, clothing, branches, and sometimes body parts
1587-412: The " due process " of the U.S. judicial system. He links the decline in lynchings in the early 20th century to "the advent of the modern death penalty", and argues that "legislators renovated the death penalty...out of direct concern for the alternative of mob violence". Between 1901 and 1964, Georgia hanged and electrocuted 609 people. Eighty-two percent of those executed were Black men, even though Georgia
1656-723: The 17th century, in the context of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms in the British Isles and unsettled social and political conditions in the American colonies, lynchings became a frequent form of "mob justice" when the authorities were perceived as untrustworthy. In the United States, during the decades after the Civil War , African Americans were the main victims of racial lynching, but in the American Southwest , Mexican Americans were also
1725-449: The 1921 Tulsa race massacre in which the majority-Black Greenwood District was razed to the ground. The NAACP mounted a strong nationwide campaign of protests and public education against The Birth of a Nation . As a result, some city governments prohibited the release of the film. In addition, the NAACP publicized production and helped create audiences for the 1919 releases, The Birth of
1794-799: The 1960s. However, in 2021 there were claims that racist lynchings still happen in the United States, being covered up as suicides. Opponents of legislation often said lynchings prevented murder and rape. As documented by Ida B. Wells , the most prevalent accusation against lynching victims was murder or attempted murder. Rape charges or rumors were present in less than one-third of the lynchings; such charges were often pretexts for lynching Blacks who violated Jim Crow etiquette or engaged in economic competition with Whites. Other common reasons given included arson, theft, assault, and robbery; sexual transgressions ( miscegenation , adultery, cohabitation); "race prejudice", "race hatred", "racial disturbance"; informing on others; "threats against whites"; and violations of
1863-533: The 19th century, as well as financial depression in the 1890s. In the Mississippi bottomlands, for instance, lynchings rose when crops and accounts were supposed to be settled. The late 1800s and early 1900s in the Mississippi Delta showed both frontier influence and actions directed at repressing African Americans. After the Civil War, 90% of the Delta was still undeveloped. Both Whites and Blacks migrated there for
1932-832: The Carolinas, paramilitary chapters of Red Shirts conducted overt violence and disruption of elections. In Louisiana, the White League had numerous chapters; they carried out goals of the Democratic Party to suppress Black voting. Grant's desire to keep Ohio in the Republican aisle and his attorney general's maneuvers led to a failure to support the Mississippi governor with Federal troops. The campaign of terror worked. In Yazoo County, Mississippi , for instance, with an African American population of 12,000, only seven votes were cast for Republicans in 1874. In 1875, Democrats swept into power in
2001-607: The Civil Rights movement, but none passed. Finally, in 2022, 67 years after Emmett Till's killing and the end of the lynching era, the United States Congress passed anti-lynching legislation in the form of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act . Collective violence was a familiar aspect of the early American legal landscape, with group violence in colonial America being usually nonlethal in intention and result. In
2070-731: The Mississippi state legislature. Lynching attacks on African Americans, especially in the South , increased dramatically in the aftermath of Reconstruction. The peak of lynchings occurred in 1892, after White Southern Democrats had regained control of state legislatures. Many incidents were related to economic troubles and competition. At the turn of the 20th century, southern states passed new constitutions or legislation which effectively disenfranchised most Black people and many Poor Whites , established segregation of public facilities by race, and separated Black people from common public life and facilities through Jim Crow laws . The rate of lynchings in
2139-480: The Montgomery County School District during the 2006-2007 school year. The gender makeup of the district was 48% female and 52% male. The racial makeup of the district was 90.17% African American, 8.52% White, 1.09% Hispanic, and 0.22% Asian. 76.7% of the district's students were eligible to receive free lunch. Montgomery County, Mississippi Montgomery County is a county located in
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2208-578: The South before 1930. Conclusions of numerous studies since the mid-20th century have found the following variables affecting the rate of lynchings in the South: "lynchings were more numerous where the African American population was relatively large, the agricultural economy was based predominantly on cotton, the white population was economically stressed, the Democratic Party was stronger, and multiple religious organizations competed for congregants." After
2277-458: The South has been strongly associated with economic strains, although the causal nature of this link is unclear. Low cotton prices, inflation , and economic stress are associated with higher frequencies of lynching. Georgia led the nation in lynchings from 1900 to 1931, with 302 incidents, according to The Tuskegee Institute . However, Florida led the nation in lynchings per capita from 1900 to 1930. Lynchings peaked in many areas when it
2346-557: The Southwest, Latinos . Of the 468 lynching victims in Texas between 1885 and 1942, 339 were Black, 77 white, 53 Hispanic, and 1 Native American. There were also Black-on-Black lynchings, with 125 recorded between 1882 and 1903, and there were four incidences of Whites being killed by Black mobs. The rate of Black-on-Black lynchings rose and fell in similar pattern of overall lynchings. There were also over 200 cases of white-on-white lynchings in
2415-566: The U.S. Deeming American criticism of Soviet Union human rights abuses at this time as hypocrisy, the Russians responded with " And you are lynching Negroes ". In Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (2001), the historian Mary L. Dudziak wrote that Soviet communist criticism of racial discrimination and violence in the United States influenced the federal government to support civil rights legislation. Most lynchings ceased by
2484-533: The United States Lynching was the widespread occurrence of extrajudicial killings which began in the United States ' pre–Civil War South in the 1830s, slowed during the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, and continued until 1981. Although the victims of lynchings were members of various ethnicities, after roughly 4 million enslaved African Americans were emancipated, they became
2553-518: The area of present-day Montgomery County was developed for cotton plantations before and after the Civil War, when it was still part of Choctaw County. Most of the labor was supplied by African Americans, enslaved before the war and freed afterward. The county was organized by the legislature in 1871, during the Reconstruction era . The eastern hilly areas became a center of timber industry. From 1877 to 1950, there were 10 known lynchings of blacks in
2622-646: The attack against him and the huge crowd that gathered. He was lynched at Paris, Texas , in 1893 for killing Myrtle Vance, the three-year-old daughter of a Texas policeman, after the policeman had assaulted Smith. Smith was not tried in a court of law. A large crowd followed the lynching, as was common then in the style of public executions. Henry Smith was fastened to a wooden platform, tortured for 50 minutes by red-hot iron brands, and burned alive while more than 10,000 spectators cheered. Fewer than one percent of lynch mob participants were ever convicted by local courts and they were seldom prosecuted or brought to trial. By
2691-434: The color line ("attending white girl", "proposals to white woman"). Although the rhetoric which surrounded lynchings frequently suggested that they were carried out in order to protect the virtue and safety of white women, the actions basically arose out of white attempts to maintain domination in a rapidly changing society and their fears of social change. Mobs usually alleged crimes for which they lynched Black people. In
2760-599: The county courthouse in Winona, after being charged in the December 1936 murder of a white merchant in Duck Hill, after Townes purportedly confessed to police. They were abducted from the courthouse and lynched . A white crowd estimated at 100 had gathered on April 13. A group of 12 white men took the two blacks by school bus to a site in Duck Hill, where they were tortured to confess before being shot and burned to death. A crowd estimated at 300 to 500 whites gathered to watch. By 1 pm,
2829-466: The county was in 1910. In addition to labor changes because of mechanization of agriculture, blacks left in two waves of the Great Migration out of the rural and small town South seeking jobs, education, relief from Jim Crow and violence, and better opportunities in other regions. As a result, Mississippi changed from majority black (56%) in population in 1910 to majority white (63%) by 1970. As of
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2898-582: The county, fewer than in many other counties of the state. It was a form of racial terrorism that was at its height at the turn of the 20th century. Some studies have shown that the rate of lynchings related to economic stresses among whites. Beginning in 1890, Mississippi and other southern states largely excluded blacks from the formal political system by disenfranchisement , creating barriers to voter registration through constitutional amendments and other laws. On April 13, 1937, two African-American men, Roosevelt Townes and "Bootjack" McDaniels, were arraigned at
2967-718: The definitions which are given to specific incidents by those sources. The Tuskegee Institute has recorded the lynchings of 3,446 Blacks and the lynchings of 1,297 Whites, all of which occurred between 1882 and 1968, with the peak occurring in the 1890s, at a time of economic stress in the South and increasing political suppression of Blacks. A six-year study published in 2017 by the Equal Justice Initiative found that 4,084 Black men, women, and children fell victim to "racial terror lynchings" in twelve Southern states between 1877 and 1950, besides 300 that took place in other states. During this period, Mississippi's 654 lynchings led
3036-507: The district allowed students residing there to transfer to other nearby school districts, including the Winona schools, schools in Grenada , and schools in French Camp . In 2001 the district ended that policy. The district attempted to stop the merger with Winona schools with a restraining order in 2017. At the time of closing: Previous schools: There were a total of 458 students enrolled in
3105-584: The entire historical time period of lynching in the United States. Before 1882, no contemporaneous statistics were assembled on a national level. In 1882, the Chicago Tribune began to systematically tabulate lynchings nationally. In 1908, the Tuskegee Institute began a systematic collection of lynching reports under the direction of Monroe Work at its Department of Records, drawn primarily from newspaper reports. Monroe Work published his first independent tabulations in 1910, although his report also went back to
3174-475: The focus of violence in Louisiana when they started arriving in greater numbers, their deaths were not tabulated separately from Whites. In earlier years, Whites who were subject to lynching were often targeted because of suspected political activities or support of freedmen, but they were generally considered members of the community in a way new immigrants were not. Other victims included white immigrants, and, in
3243-480: The game of football". D. W. Griffith 's 1915 film, The Birth of a Nation , glorified the original Ku Klux Klan as protecting white southern women during Reconstruction, which he portrayed as a time of violence and corruption , following the Dunning School 's interpretation of history. The film aroused great controversy. It was popular among Whites nationwide, but it was protested against by Black activists,
3312-698: The governmental sovereignty of the state..." At the time a federal anti-lynching bill was under consideration by Congress. It passed the House, but it was defeated in the Senate by the Solid South , conservative white Democrats. As was typical of lynchings, no one was ever prosecuted for the murders. Nazi Germany reported the lynching, comparing it to the "humanism" of its anti-Semitic laws. As in much of rural Mississippi, population in this county declined markedly from 1910 to 1920, and from 1940 to 1970. The peak of population in
3381-514: The historian William Gillette to label it " guerrilla warfare ", and historian Thomas E. Smith to understand it as a form of " colonial violence". The lynchers sometimes murdered their victims, but sometimes whipped or physically assaulted them to remind them of their former status as slaves. Often night-time raids of African American homes were made in order to confiscate firearms. Lynchings to prevent freedmen and their allies from voting and bearing arms were extralegal ways of trying to enforce
3450-458: The late 19th century, however, journalist Ida B. Wells showed that many presumed crimes were either exaggerated or had not even occurred. The ideology behind lynching, directly connected to the denial of political and social equality, was stated forthrightly in 1900 by United States Senator Benjamin Tillman , who was previously governor of South Carolina : We of the South have never recognized
3519-532: The late 19th century, trial juries in most of the southern United States were all white because African Americans had been disenfranchised, and only registered voters could serve as jurors. Often juries never let the matter go past the inquest. Such cases happened in the North as well. In 1892, a police officer in Port Jervis, New York , tried to stop the lynching of a Black man who had been wrongfully accused of assaulting
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#17331218037573588-454: The lynchings which occurred in all of the Southern states. The records of Tuskegee Institute remain the single most complete source of statistics and records on this crime since 1882 for all states, although modern research has illuminated new incidents in studies focused on specific states in isolation. As of 1959, which was the last time that Tuskegee Institute's annual report was published,
3657-581: The mid-1870s onward, violence rose as insurgent paramilitary groups in the Deep South worked to suppress Black voting and turn Republicans out of office. In Louisiana, the Carolinas, and Florida especially, the Democratic Party relied on paramilitary "White Line" groups, such as the White Camelia , White League and Red Shirts to terrorize, intimidate and assassinate African-American and white Republicans in an organized drive to regain power. In Mississippi and
3726-510: The new social order which was constructed under Jim Crow; Whites acted together, reinforcing their collective identity along with the unequal status of Blacks through these group acts of violence. Lynchings were also (in part) intended as a voter suppression tool. A 2019 study found that lynchings occurred more frequently in proximity to elections, in particular in areas where the Democratic Party faced challenges. Tuskegee Institute, now Tuskegee University , defined conditions that constituted
3795-534: The population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. According to the census of 2000, the largest ancestry groups in Montgomery County were African 44.95%, English 42.1%, and Scots-Irish 1%. There were 4,690 households, out of which 32.60% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 48.50% were married couples living together, 18.80% had a female householder with no husband present, and 28.20% were non-families. 26.10% of all households were made up of individuals, and 13.60% had someone living alone who
3864-760: The previous system of social dominance and the Black Codes , which had been invalidated by the 14th and 15th Amendments in 1868 and 1870. Journalist, educator, and civil rights leader, Ida B. Wells commented in an 1892 pamphlet she published called Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases that, "The only times an Afro-American who was assaulted got away has been when he had a gun and used it in self-defense." A study published in August 2022 by researchers from Clemson University has stated that, "...rates of Black lynching decreased with greater Black firearm access..." From
3933-529: The primary targets of white Southerners . Lynchings in the U.S. reached their height from the 1890s to the 1920s, and they primarily victimized ethnic minorities . Most of the lynchings occurred in the American South , as the majority of African Americans lived there, but racially motivated lynchings also occurred in the Midwest and border states . In 1891, the largest single mass lynching in American history
4002-537: The right of the negro to govern white men, and we never will. We have never believed him to be the equal of the white man, and we will not submit to his gratifying his lust on our wives and daughters without lynching him. Lynchings declined briefly after White supremacists, the so-called " Redeemers ", took over the governments of the southern states in the 1870s. By the end of the 19th century, with struggles over labor and disenfranchisement, and continuing agricultural depression, lynchings rose again. Between 1882 and 1968,
4071-533: The second most common accusation; these accusations were often used as a pretext for lynching African Americans who were accused of violating Jim Crow era etiquette or engaged in economic competition with Whites . One study found that there were "4,467 total victims of lynching from 1883 to 1941. Of these victims, 4,027 were men, 99 were women, and 341 were of unidentified gender (although likely male); 3,265 were Black, 1,082 were white, 71 were Mexican or of Mexican descent, 38 were American Indian, 10 were Chinese, and 1
4140-550: The starting year 1882. Finally, in 1912, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People started an independent record of lynchings. The numbers of lynchings from each source vary slightly, with the Tuskegee Institute's figures being considered "conservative" by some historians. Based on the source, the numbers vary depending on the sources which are cited, the years which are considered by those sources, and
4209-479: The targets of lynching as well. At the first recorded lynching, in St. Louis in 1835, a Black man named McIntosh (who killed a deputy sheriff while being taken to jail) was captured, chained to a tree, and burned to death on a corner lot downtown in front of a crowd of over 1,000 people. According to historian Michael J. Pfeifer, the prevalence of lynchings in post–Civil War America reflected people's lack of confidence in
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#17331218037574278-524: The victims were falsely accused. Tuskegee Institute's method of categorizing most lynching victims as either Black or white in publications and data summaries meant that the murders of some minority and immigrant groups were obscured. In the West, for instance, Mexican, Native Americans, and Chinese were more frequent targets of lynchings than were African Americans, but their deaths were included among those of other Whites. Similarly, although Italian immigrants were
4347-520: The wire services and other national media had learned of the event and were trying to gain more information. The lynchings were reported nationally in the United States and widely condemned. Representative Hatton W. Sumners (D-Texas), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee , sent a telegram to Governor Hugh L. White decrying the lynching. He said, "It is the sort of thing which makes it hard for those of us who are here trying to protect
4416-457: Was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.57 and the average family size was 3.10. In the county, the population was spread out, with 26.80% under the age of 18, 8.90% from 18 to 24, 25.30% from 25 to 44, 22.40% from 45 to 64, and 16.70% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 37 years. For every 100 females there were 86.40 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 81.10 males. The median income for
4485-402: Was Japanese." A common perception of lynchings in the U.S. is that they were only hangings , due to the public visibility of the location, which made it easier for photographers to photograph the victims. Some lynchings were professionally photographed and then the photos were sold as postcards , which became popular souvenirs in parts of the United States. Lynching victims were also killed in
4554-703: Was majority white. Pfeifer also cited "the modern, racialized excesses of urban police forces in the twentieth century and after" as bearing characteristics of lynchings. A major motive for lynchings, particularly in the South, was white society's efforts to maintain white supremacy after the emancipation of enslaved people following the American Civil War . Lynchings punished perceived violations of customs, later institutionalized as Jim Crow laws , which mandated racial segregation of Whites and Blacks, and second-class status for Blacks. A 2017 paper found that more racially segregated counties were more likely to be places where Whites conducted lynchings. Lynchings emphasized
4623-539: Was not uncommon. Some of those photographs were published and sold as postcards. In 2000, James Allen published a collection of 145 lynching photos in book form as well as online, with written words and video to accompany the images. The murders reflected the tensions of labor and social changes, as the Whites imposed Jim Crow rules, legal segregation and white supremacy. The lynchings were also an indicator of long economic stress due to falling cotton prices through much of
4692-527: Was perpetrated in New Orleans against Italian immigrants . Lynchings followed African Americans with the Great Migration ( c. 1916–1970 ) out of the American South, and were often perpetrated to enforce white supremacy and intimidate ethnic minorities along with other acts of racial terrorism. A significant number of lynching victims were accused of murder or attempted murder . Rape , attempted rape, or other forms of sexual assault were
4761-430: Was time for landowners to settle accounts with sharecroppers . The frequency of lynchings rose during years of poor economy and low prices for cotton, demonstrating that more than social tensions generated the catalysts for mob action against the underclass. Researchers have studied various models to determine what motivated lynchings. One study of lynching rates of Blacks in Southern counties between 1889 and 1931 found
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