Lynching

Abstract

Lynching refers to an act of vigilantism, in which a group of persons punish an alleged crime outside the legal system, with community sanction. It has been practiced across the globe and has long historical roots, but it most commonly refers to acts of racial terrorism in the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Lynch mobs targeted racial and ethnic minorities as a means to establish and maintain white authority in moments of social and political upheaval. In the Jim Crow period, thousands of African American men were tortured, hanged, or burned under the guise of preserving social order and controlling black crime.