Lynching in the United States is estimated to have claimed over 4.7 thousand lives between 1882 and 1968, and just under 3.5 thousand of these victims were black. Today, lynching is more commonly associated with racial oppression, particularly in the south, however, in early years, victims were more commonly white (specifically Mexican), and lynchings were more frequent in western territories and along the southern border. It was only after Reconstruction's end where the lynching of black people became more prevalent, and was arguably the most violent tool of oppression used by white supremacists. Nationwide, the share of the population who was black fluctuated between 10 and 13 percent in the years shown here, however the share of lynching victims who were black was almost 73 percent. North-south divide Of the 4.7 thousand victims of lynching between 1882 and 1968, over 3.5 thousand of these were killed in former-Confederate states. Of the fourteen states where the highest number of lynching victims were killed, eleven were former-Confederate states, and all saw the deaths of at least one hundred people due to lynching. Mississippi was the state where most people were lynched in these years, with an estimated 581 victims, 93 percent of whom were black. Georgia saw the second most lynchings, with 531 in total, and the share of black victims was also 93 percent. Compared to the nationwide average of 73 percent, the share of black victims in former-Confederate states was 86 percent. Texas was the only former-Confederate state where this share (71 percent) was below the national average, due to the large number of Mexicans who were lynched there. Outside of the south Of the non-Confederate state with the highest number of lynching victims, most either bordered the former-Confederate states, or were to the west. Generally speaking, the share of white victims in these states was often higher than in the south, meaning that the majority took place in the earlier years represented here; something often attributed to the lack of an established judiciary system in rural regions, and the demand for a speedy resolution. However, there are many reports of black people being lynched in the former border states in the early-20th century, as they made their way northward during the Great Migration. Between 1882 and 1968, lynchings were rare in the Northeast, although Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island were the only states** without any recorded lynchings in these years.

The term "lynching" is believed to derive from the name of Charles Lynch, a Virginia planter who presided over an irregular and unofficial court during the Revolutionary War. Lynch's use of extralegal measures to punish those loyal to the British crown, helped to inspire mobs in later years to administer their own form of vigilante justice outside of the courts. Eventually, the term came to describe cases where supposed offenders were executed through mob violence without a proper trial and outside of legal jurisdiction. The most famous examples of these executions in the U.S. were those where the victim was hanged (due to the relatively large amount of photographic evidence); however, there were also cases where the victims were shot, burned or tortured and dismembered, among others. Lynching before Jim Crow In the early years of U.S. independence, lynching was most common along the frontier and in western territories, due to the lack of established or immediate judicial systems, and most studies suggest that these victims were mostly white and Mexican. Possibly the largest case of lynching (and largest case of mass hanging) in the United States, was in Texas in 1862, in what is known as the "Great Hanging at Gainsville"; this was where local slaveholders organized the mob hanging of 41 white men and shot three others, due to their supposed allegiance to the Union. Following the American Civil War, however, lynching became inextricably linked with racial inequality and white supremacy in the southern states of the U.S., and black Americans comprised the vast majority of lynching victims from 1886 onwards. Lynching of black Americans The Compromise of 1877 coincided with the emergence of the Jim Crow era in the southern states; it saw the removal of Union troops from the south and established political structures based on white supremacy and the oppression of minorities. Gradually, many of the rights and protections that were granted to black Americans following emancipation were stripped away. This period also saw a vast increase in the number of lynchings in the country, with the majority of these cases taking place in the south. Within ten years of Reconstruction's end, the number of black lynchings exceeded those of white lynchings, and over the next century it is estimated that there were over 4,700 lynchings across the country. Of the 4,740 lynchings estimated to have taken place between 1882 and 1965, 3,445 of the victims were black; this equates to over 72 percent of the total victims of lynching, despite black Americans making up just 10 to 13 percent of the total population. Of these 4,700 lynchings, around 3,500 took place in former Confederate states, where the share of black victims increased to 86 percent. As the years progressed, organized lynchings became more infrequent and were publicized less, and the implementation of the death penalty is thought to have replaced the sense of justice that lynching brought to its perpetrators. Nonetheless, it was not until 1952 where the U.S. went a full year without any known cases of lynching, and the final lynching cases were recorded in 1964 (although some have classified a number of murders after 1964 as lynchings, due to their connections with race and civil rights).

These data extend existing data on lynching victims to cover the 48 contiguous United States from 1883 to 1941. The data here cover 38 states not included in Tolney and Beck's (1995) original data, as well as 3 additional victims in the 10 states covered by Tolney and Beck. The authors confirmed 1,319 victims from previous data and found 15 additional victims not recorded in any prior data set.

This is a dataset with US states as the unit of analysis. Included are states' police killing totals from 2000–2020, states' lynchings and executions 1882–1936, states' racial demographics in 1910 and 2010, and violent crime, gun ownership percentages, and poverty percentages from 2010. Each tabulation (lynchings, executions, police killings, violent crime) has been turned into a rate by dividing the frequency by the state's population in the appropriate era.

Although restricting formal voting rights—voter suppression—is not uncommon in democracies, its incidence and form vary widely. Intuitively, when competing elites believe that the benefits of reducing voting by opponents outweigh the costs of voter suppression, it is more likely to occur. Internal political and state capacity and external actors, however, influence the form voter suppression takes. When elites competing for office lack the ability to enact laws restricting voting due to limited internal capacity, or external actors are able to limit the ability of governments to use laws to suppress voting, suppression is likely to be ad hoc, decentralized, and potentially violent. As political and state capacity increase and external constraints decrease, voter suppression will shift from decentralized and potentially violent to centralized and mostly non-violent. We illustrate our arguments by analyzing the transition from decentralized, violent voter suppression through the use of lynchings (and associated violence) to the centralized, less violent suppression of black voting in the post-Reconstruction South. We also place the most recent wave of U.S. state voter suppression laws into broader context using our theoretical framework.

A red record : tabulated statistics and alleged causes of lynchings in the United States, 1892-1893-1894